Guided page navigation

ABSTRACT

Configuring a set of guided documents for operation of a business activity based on a workflow for the activity, industry expertise, and a plurality of models of source data that is relevant to the business activity, wherein points of entry to access the guided documents are organized around one or more industry-specific data dimensions.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. non-provisional application Ser. No. 13/907,274 filed May 31, 2013, which is incorporated herein in its entirety. U.S. application Ser. No. 13/907,274 claims the benefit of U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 61/655,847 filed on Jun. 5, 2012 that is incorporated herein in its entirety, and U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 61/789,527 filed on Mar. 15, 2013 that is incorporated herein in its entirety.

BACKGROUND

Field

The present invention is related to tablet-based business intelligence methods and systems.

Description of the Related Art

Business intelligence systems require custom programming and maintenance by professional systems analysts, leaving the executive or employee with little direct control over the means of data discovery. Dynamic linking of data is on-line business intelligence systems tends to be limited to diving vertically within a data domain, thereby preventing a user for readily viewing related data in other data domains without a cumbersome regeneration process. Also tablet-based business intelligence systems are in high demand and no business intelligence solutions exist to effectively utilize a tablet-based device.

SUMMARY

Throughout this disclosure wine and spirits (liquor) industries are used as examples of the methods and systems described herein. The use of wine and sprits is merely exemplary and in no way is meant to limit the inventive concepts, applications, markets, or uses of the methods and systems described herein. Many other industries, such as automotive parts, healthcare, financial, and nearly any other business concern can take advantage of and gain significant benefit from the methods and systems related to guided page navigation, data discovery, distinct data domain navigation, dynamic presentation path selection, times series modeling, synchronizing for off-line use, and the like that are described herein.

Core Vectors

The methods and system for configuring guided pages in this document include methods and systems that may be used for configuring a set of guided pages for operation of a business activity based on a workflow for the activity, industry expertise, and a plurality of models derived from source data that may be relevant to the business activity. In addition, each page of the set of guided pages may be organized around one or more industry-specific data dimensions. In addition, the plurality of models may be non-hierarchical models, freeform data models, and/or models of distinct data domains. In addition, the plurality of models may be structured for rapid access to generate a portion of the set of guided pages. In addition, at least one of the one or more industry-specific data dimensions may be a core dimension. At least one of the one or more industry-specific data dimensions may be a dynamic dimension. At least one page of the set of guided pages may be a presentation object. The presentation object may be a portion of a document.

The methods and systems for configuring a set of guided documents may include methods and systems that may be capable of configuring a set of guided documents for operation of the business activity based on the workflow for the activity, industry expertise, and the plurality of models of source data that may be relevant to the business activity. Configuring a set of guided documents may include configuring a set of points of entry to access the guided documents and the point of entry may be organized around one or more industry-specific data dimensions. The plurality of models may be non-hierarchical models, freeform data models, and/or models of distinct data domains. The plurality of models may be structured for rapid access. The at least one of the one or more industry-specific data dimensions may be a core dimension. The at least one of the one or more industry-specific data dimensions may be a dynamic dimension.

The methods and systems for navigation of guided pages disclosed herein may include methods and systems that may be configured for navigation among a set of guided pages for operation of a business activity. The navigation may be based on a workflow for the activity, industry-specific data models, and at least one core data dimension of the business. The navigation may allow direct movement between guided pages in distinct data domains. The methods and systems for navigation of guided pages disclosed herein may also include a guided page navigation engine that may be configured to interact with the industry-specific data models, the workflow, and at least one core data dimension to generate a next guided page for the user. The system may be configured so as to allow a direct movement between distinct data domain simply by selecting a selectable items in a first guided page that includes data from a first distinct data domain that shares a common core dimension with data from a second distinct data domain.

The methods and systems for preconfiguring page to page navigation disclosed herein may include methods and systems for configuring a navigation map for navigation among a set of guided pages for operation of a business activity allowing industry-expert guided discovery of data based on a modeling method. The modeling method may comprise multi-source data collection, script-based data integration, and industry-specific core data dimension discovery. The modeling method may further include configuring a plurality of data models of distinct data domains to provide rapid access to distinct domains of data that may be relevant to the business activity. The modeling method may be further configured to use industry-specific business rules to facilitate the rapid access. The multi-source data collection may include integrating data from a plurality of disparate data sources.

The methods and systems of guided data page generation may include a page generation engine that may be configured for presenting a set of business activity guided pages of data from industry-specific data models. The pages may include actionable elements and points of entry that may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map and that may activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for the business activity.

The methods and systems of guided content page generation may include a content page generation engine that may be configured for presenting a set of business activity guided pages of content based on models of data associated with the business activity. The pages may include actionable elements and points of entry that may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map and that may activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for the business activity. The models of data may include industry-specific models of data.

The methods and systems of guided navigation disclosed herein may include methods and systems for guided navigation throughout and across distinct data domains that may be clustered around industry-specific core dimensions of source data. The industry-specific core dimensions may be determined during a data discovery process. The method of guided navigation may be encoded into the guided page navigation engine.

The methods and systems for generating guided pages of industry-specific actionable elements may include methods and systems of guided navigation throughout and across distinct data domains via a set of guided pages for operation of a business activity. The pages may include row and column headings that may represent data associated with at least one of industry-specific data dimensions and domains related to a core data dimension. Each row heading, each column heading, and each intersecting cell may be a point of entry to a guided page that comprises at least one of data and other content related to the row and/or columns associated with the point of entry. The industry-specific data dimension may be a core data dimension. The row and column headings may represent data associated with the same data dimension. The row and column headings may represent data associated with the same data domain. The column headings may represent data associated with an industry-specific data. The dimension and row headings may represent data associated with a data domain. The column headings may represent data associated with a data domain and the row headings may represent data associated with an industry-specific data dimension.

The methods and systems for facilitating directly jumping to relevant data/dimensions in a tabular user interface may include a user interface that may be configured for displaying tabular data. The user interface may enable a user to select a data item in the table. The user may then be presented with a new data domain and set of dimensions that may have been pre-determined by an analyst and found to be likely to be relevant to the user. The relevancy may be based on the business context of the user and prior navigation steps of the user within the interface. A guided page navigation engine associated with the interface may be configured to store a navigation history of a user.

The methods and systems for facilitating directly jumping to relevant data/dimensions in a graph-based user interface may include a user interface that may be configured for displaying graph-based data. The user interface may enable a user to select an item in a graph. The user may then be presented with a new data domain and set of dimensions that may have been pre-determined by an analyst and found to be likely to be relevant to the user. The relevancy may be based on the business context of the user and prior navigation steps of the user within the interface. A guided page navigation engine associated with the interface may be configured to store a navigation history of a user.

The methods and systems for facilitating directly jumping to relevant data/dimensions in a content presentation user interface may include a user interface that may be configured for presenting image or document-type content. The user interface may enable a user to select an actionable item, such as a point of entry in the user interface. The user may then be presented with document-type content from a new data domain and set of dimensions that may have been pre-determined by an analyst and found to be likely to be relevant to the user. The relevancy may be based on the business context of the user and prior navigation steps of the user within the interface. A guided page navigation engine associated with the interface may be configured to store a navigation history of a user.

The methods and systems for facilitating directly jumping to relevant data/dimensions in a tabular user interface may include a user interface that may be configured for displaying tabular data. The user interface may enable a user to select a data item in the table. The user may then be presented with a new data domain and set of dimensions that may have been pre-determined by an analyst and found to be likely to be relevant to the user. The relevancy may be based on the business context of the user and prior navigation steps of the user within the interface. The dimensions of the receiving page may be determined based on the data selected by a user in the interface and the data on the receiving page may be filtered based on prior actions of the user in the user interface.

Alternatively, the user interface may be configured to display a graph that may be presented with associated dimensions and actionable items for generating a receiving page. As described above, the dimensions of the receiving page may be determined based on an item selected by a user in the interface and the data on the receiving page may be filtered based on prior actions of the user in the user interface.

Alternatively, the user interface may be configured to display content that is associated with at least one core dimension and actionable items for generating a receiving page. The dimensions of the receiving page may be determined based on an item selected by a user in the interface and the data on the receiving page may be filtered based on prior actions of the user in the user interface.

The methods and systems of creating a large number of reports for a data set may include creating reports that may represent a wide range of possible views of the data set based on dimensions of data that may be present or available in the data set that may comprise a range of data sources that may be used by a business including internal and external data sources. The reports may have tables that have dimensions that may be calculated or dynamic, and values or summaries that may correspond to those dimensions. The method may further include relating values to the dimensions to which they relate on the screen as presented in a particular report as well as to many other dimensions in the collection of reports that are not shown. The method may further include enabling a user to select a dimension or a value. In addition, selecting a presented dimension may give the user the chance to see a report keyed to the presented dimension. The report may include values and possibly other dimensions that may be associated with the selected dimension. In addition, selecting a value may allow a user to see other dimensions that may have a relationship with the selected value along with other values that may be associated with the other dimensions. The method may further include configuring the pre-arranged, guided navigation so that a set of new dimensions and values that may be selected may be shown based on a prescribed flow.

The methods and systems of creating a large number of reports in graph form for a data set may include creating reports that may represent a wide range of possible views of the data set based on dimensions of data that may be present or available in the data set that may comprise a range of data sources that may be used by a business including internal and external data sources. The reports may include graphs that have dimensions that may be calculated or dynamic, and values or summaries that may correspond to those dimensions. The method may include relating values to the dimensions to which they may be graphed in a particular report as well as to many other dimensions in the collection of reports. The method may further include enabling a user to select a dimension or a graphed value. In addition, selecting a presented dimension or graphed value may give the user the chance to see a report keyed to the selection. The report may include graphs and possibly other dimensions that may be associated with the selected dimension. In addition, selecting a graphed value may allow a user to see other dimensions that may have a relationship with the selection along with other graphed values that may be associated with the other dimensions. The method may further include configuring the pre-arranged, guided navigation so that a set of new dimensions and graphed values may be selected and may be shown based on a prescribed flow.

The methods and systems may include configuring a large number of content items associated with a data set for viewing in a tablet user interface. The content items may be associated with a wide range of possible views of the data set based on dimensions of data that may be present or available in the data set that may comprises a range of data sources used by a business including internal and external data sources. The content items may be further associated with values or summaries that may correspond to the dimensions, which may be calculated or dynamic. The method may be configured so that the content items may be presented with a portion of the associated dimensions or values. In addition, content items may be associated with many other dimensions. The method may be further configured so that a user may select a content item in the user interface to see other content items that may have associated dimensions or values associated with the selection. The method may further include configuring the pre-arranged, guided navigation so that may selects data and show data based on a prescribed flow. This interface may be programmed so that the next page may be determined based on what is believed to be most usable by the user, taking into account a business case/industry context and user historical views. In addition, the interface methods as mentioned above may be programmed so that the flow may be iterative, such that a user may explore many values and dimensions by moving from one value to another value and from one dimension to another dimension.

The methods and systems for generating guided pages from disparate data sources disclosed herein may include a method of generating a set of guided pages for operation of a business activity comprising gathering data from a wide range of data sources into a data repository; integrating data with a script-based domain editor. A script for the script-based domain editor may be generated based on use of a visual integration facility. The method may further include determining dimensions of the data, including determining dynamic dimensions. The method further includes determining associations of data with dimensions. The method also includes calculating one or more of data values and summaries for the dimensions and organizing the data into model-based data repositories. The method further includes configuring a set of business rules for accessing the model-based data repositories. The method includes generating a plurality of linkable pages that may be suitable for presentation on a tablet computing device. The method includes determining permissible links among the plurality of linkable pages and associating particular links with actionable points of entry in the guided pages so that the linkages may suit a workflow for a particular business activity. The method may be configured so that determining associations of data with dimensions may include determining associations of data with core dimensions.

In addition, the linkable pages may be configured to present data and dimensions in tabular or graphical formats. The linkable pages may present document image content associated with the workflow.

The method may be configured for further including calculating data summaries to facilitate guided page generation. In addition, the data summary may be based on a dynamic dimension.

The methods and systems of generating and navigating among guided pages may include associating documents to at least one core dimension and to data clustered around the core dimension so that the documents may be viewed in a tablet-based user interface in response to a user selection of an actionable item in the interface.

The methods and systems described herein may include summarizing data into time period buckets for each of a plurality of core data dimensions that may be determined in a discovery and modeling process of data in a data set so that a page generation engine serves time summarized pages for at least one of the core data dimensions without requiring access to the data set. The guided page navigation engine may be operably coupled to a cache of guided pages that may keep a record of all time summaries and may assist in formation of next guided page based on previous guided pages.

The methods and systems for times series summary modeling may include generating an industry-specific data model of time-period based summaries of data of core data dimensions that are determined in a discovery process of data in a data set. In addition, the time-period based summaries may be generated for each of a plurality of core dimensions. The time period based summaries may be stored in a cache of guided pages or at a location elsewhere from where the data stored as time period based summaries may be accessed by the page generation engine with a need for accessing the plurality of core dimensions from main data set. This may facilitate in securing access to core dimension data and also increase efficiency of the user as the user may now browse previous data without a need to be connected to the core dimension data.

The methods of time series summary modeling may alternatively include generating a set of industry-specific models of time-period based data summaries for operation of a business activity comprising gathering data from a wide range of data sources into a data repository. The method may be further including integrating data with a script-based integrator. The script for the script-based integrator may be generated based on use of a visual integration facility. The method may further include determining dimensions of the data, including determining dynamic dimensions. The method may further include determining associations of data with dimensions. In addition, the method may also include calculating one or more of data values and summaries for the dimensions, including time-period based summaries and organizing the data into model-based data repositories. The method may further include configuring a set of business rules for accessing the model-based data repositories.

In addition, the method above may further include generating a plurality of linkable pages that may be suitable for presentation on a tablet computing device. The method may be further include determining permissible links among the plurality of linkable pages and associating particular links with actionable points of entry in the guided pages so that the linkages may suit a workflow for a particular business activity.

The methods and systems described herein may include processing data from distinct data domains to facilitate determining at least one core dimension that is common to a portion of the distinct data domains that are captured in distinct data models and linking the distinct data models in a guided page navigation map that enables navigation within and among the distinct data models via the common core dimension. In these methods, data from any one of the distinct data models can be accessed via data associated with the common core dimension from any other of the distinct data models.

The methods and systems described herein may include presenting in a guided page user interface data associated with a core dimension of a first data model in response to a [user] selection in the guided page user interface of an item [of data] from a second data model, wherein the first and second data models represent different data domains and wherein the item of data is associated with the core dimension.

The methods and systems described herein may include a guided page user interface that enables presenting items of data from a first data domain, and in response to a user selection of a presented item of data, presenting items of data from a second data domain based on the first and second data domains having a common core dimension. In these methods the first and second data domains are distinct domains. Alternatively, the selected item of data is associated with the common core dimension. In addition, the common core dimension is determined during data discovery of a plurality of data sources representing the first and second data domains. In yet another alternative, the user interface is adapted to access at least two distinct data models representing the first data domain and the second data domain.

The methods and systems described herein may include automated identification of navigation among pages across distinct models and data domains that share a common core dimension and based on historical user actions.

The methods and systems described herein may include dynamically navigating a presentation that comprises a set of guided pages of content wherein groups of presentation pages are linked to other groups of presentation pages through association with a set of core dimensions that are determined during a data discovery process and that are common to the presentation pages.

The methods and systems relating to guided navigation throughout and across data domains that are clustered around industry-specific core dimensions of data that are determined during a data discovery process.

In one aspect of the methods and systems described herein, a system includes a data set may include data from a plurality of data domains, the data set characterized by data having a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions, wherein at least one of the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains; a plurality of guided pages that facilitate data discovery through user interactions with at least one of a displayable actionable element and an actionable point of entry associated with at least one of the industry-specific core dimensions, wherein user interaction with at least one of a displayable actionable element and an actionable point of entry results in presenting at least one of: a guided page of a current data domain; and a guided page of an alternate data domain that may be associated with an industry-specific core dimension that may be common to the current and alternate data domains; guided page high level description information that facilitates navigation among the plurality of guided pages; and guided page data structure information that facilitates orienting information derived from the data in the data set in an interactive electronic display.

The displayable actionable elements are determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. The displayable actionable elements activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. The points of entry are determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. The points of entry activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for the business activity associated with the data set. The system facilitates data discovery based on a guided page navigation map that enables navigation within and among the plurality of data domains via the common core dimension. The data from any of the plurality of data domains that have a common core dimension can be accessed via an actionable element of a guided page that may include data of any of the plurality of data domains that have the common core dimension. In order to facilitate data discovery, data associated with a core dimension of a first data domain may be presented in a guided page user interface in response to a selection in the guided page user interface of an actionable element associated with a second data domain. The first and second data domains represent different data domains and wherein the actionable element may be also associated with the core dimension. The actionable element depicts an item of data associated with the core dimension. The actionable element depicts an item of data associated with the second data domain. The plurality of data domains are derived from distinct data models. The distinct data models may include industry-specific data models. The each of the plurality of data domains may be derived from a distinct data model. In an example, the distinct data models may include industry-specific data models. In an example, a guided page that may be presented in response to user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. The plurality of guided pages may include groups of diverse-content pages of a business presentation, navigation among the groups being based on a core dimension that may be common to the groups. In an example, the pages in a group are independent of any specific data domain. In an example, the data set may include data from a plurality of data domains derived from a plurality of data sources including customer data sources associated with operating a business and external data sources. The customer data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, non-standard formatted data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The external data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of third party feeds, market data, end-user data, state data, county data, regional data, and demo data. In an example, the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. In an example, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. Alternatively, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be determined by a combination of factors selected from the set consisting of: input from an industry-specific expert, a role of the user, a workflow of the user, previously presented guided pages, a core dimension associated with a selected actionable element or point of entry; business rules that facilitate configuring the plurality of data domains, candidate next domains, and metadata associated at least one of a presented guided page and a selected actionable element or a point of entry. In an example, the data set may include calculated summaries of data suitable for presentation in a guided page based on the guided page data structure information and non-summarized data that may be processed to comply with the data structure information just prior to being presented in a guided page. Alternatively, the data set may include dimensions, summary fields, and information fields. Otherwise, the data set may include summaries of all data associated with all common core dimensions. Alternatively, the data set may include a plurality of core dimensions and a plurality of dynamic dimensions. For example, to present a guided page based on one of the plurality of dynamic dimensions may include processing that data to conform with the guided page data structure information in response to a user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry that may be not required for presenting a guided page based on one of the plurality of core dimensions. In an example, the data set may include at least one central dimension. The central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, the central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. In an example, the data set may include data associated with a variety of access permissions that are automatically granted based on relevancy of the data with at least one of the core dimensions of the data set. The permissions may be automatically granted based on a combination of user role, business workflow, and industry requirements configured by an industry expert. In an example, a guided page may include a tabular view of data items. For example, the guided page may include points of entry as column and row headers of a matrix of data items. Further, data items may include actionable elements. Moreover, a portion of data items may include actionable elements. In an example, a guided page may include a chart with chart elements that represent data associated with a data domain, such that, a portion of chart elements may include actionable elements. In an example, a guided page may include one of an access page, a central page, an overview page, and a list page. The access page may be associated with a core dimension. The central page may be associated with a central dimension. The central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, the central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. The overview page may be associated with a plurality of dimensions. In an example, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an access page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of access pages, central pages, and overview pages. Alternatively, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a central page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, access pages, and list pages. Further, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a list page may result in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, overview pages, and list pages. Moreover, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an overview page may result in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of overview pages, access pages, and list pages.

In another aspect of the methods and systems described herein, a method includes using a processor to access a data set may include data from a plurality of data domains and a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions, wherein at least one of the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains; facilitating data discovery through user interactions with displayable actionable elements, associated with the industry-specific core dimensions, that are presented by the processor in a plurality of guided pages on an interactive electronic display, wherein user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements results in presenting at least one of: a guided page of a current data domain; and a guided page of an alternate data domain that may be associated with an industry-specific core dimension that may be common to the current and alternate data domains; facilitating navigation among the plurality of guided pages based on guided page high level description information accessible by the processor; and orienting information derived from the data in the data set in an interactive electronic display based on guided page data structure information that may be accessible by the processor.

The displayable actionable elements may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. In an example, the displayable actionable elements activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. In an example, facilitating data discovery may be based on a guided page navigation map that enables navigation within and among the plurality of data domains via the common core dimension. In an example, data from any of the plurality of data domains that have a common core dimension can be accessed via an actionable element of a guided page that may include data of any of the plurality of data domains that have the common core dimension. In an example, facilitating data discovery may include presenting in a guided page user interface data associated with a core dimension of a first data domain in response to a selection in the guided page user interface of an actionable element associated with a second data domain, wherein the first and second data domains represent different data domains and wherein the actionable element may be also associated with the core dimension. The actionable element depicts an item of data associated with the core dimension. Alternatively, the actionable element depicts an item of data associated with the second data domain. In an example, the plurality of data domains may be derived from distinct data models. The distinct data models may include industry-specific data models. In an example, each of the plurality of data domains may be derived from a distinct data model. The distinct data models may include industry-specific data models. In an example, a guided page that may be presented in response to user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements may be based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. In another example, the plurality of guided pages may include groups of diverse-content pages of a business presentation, navigation among the groups being based on a core dimension that may be common to the groups. The pages in a group may be independent of any specific data domain. In an example, the data set may include data from a plurality of data domains derived from a plurality of data sources including customer data sources associated with operating a business and external data sources. The customer data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, non-standard formatted data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The external data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of third party feeds, market data, end-user data, state data, county data, regional data, and demo data. In an example, the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. In an example, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. Alternatively, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be determined by a combination of factors selected from the set consisting of: input from an industry-specific expert, a role of the user, a workflow of the user, previously presented guided pages, a core dimension associated with a selected actionable element or point of entry; business rules that facilitate configuring the plurality of data domains, candidate next domains, and metadata associated at least one of a presented guided page and a selected actionable element or a point of entry. In an example, the data set may include calculated summaries of data suitable for presentation in a guided page based on the guided page data structure information and non-summarized data processed to comply with the data structure information just prior to being presented in a guided page. Alternatively, the data set may include dimensions, summary fields, and information fields. Further, the data set may include summaries of all data associated with all common core dimensions. Moreover, the data set may include a plurality of core dimensions and a plurality of dynamic dimensions. A guided page based on one of the plurality of dynamic dimensions may include processing that data to conform with the guided page data structure information in response to a user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry that may be not required for presenting a guided page based on one of the plurality of core dimensions. In an example, the data set may include at least one central dimension. A central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, a central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. In an example, the data set may include data associated with a variety of access permissions that are automatically granted based on relevancy of the data with at least one of the core dimensions of the data set. The permissions are automatically granted based on a combination of user role, business workflow, and industry requirements configured by an industry expert. In an example, a guided page may include a tabular view of data items. The guided page may include points of entry as column and row headers of a matrix of data items. Further, data items may include actionable elements. Moreover, a portion of data items may include actionable elements. In another example, a guided page may include a chart with chart elements that represent data associated with a data domain, such that, a portion of chart elements may include actionable elements. Further, a guided page may include one of an access page, a central page, an overview page, and a list page. The access page may be associated with a core dimension. The central page may be associated with a central dimension. The central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, a central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. The overview page may be associated with a plurality of dimensions. In an example, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an access page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of access pages, central pages, and overview pages. Alternatively, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a central page may result in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, access pages, and list pages. Further, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a list page may result in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, overview pages, and list pages. Moreover, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an overview page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of overview pages, access pages, and list pages.

The methods and systems relating to navigation among a set of guided pages for operation of a business activity. The navigation may be based on a workflow for the activity, industry-specific data models, and at least one core data dimension of the business. The navigation may allow direct movement between guided pages in different domains.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein, a system may include a data set may include data from a plurality of data domains derived from a plurality of industry-specific data models, the data set characterized by data having a plurality of core dimensions relating to parameters of a business, wherein at least one of the plurality of core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains; a plurality of guided pages that facilitate direct navigation among the plurality of data domains in response to user interactions with displayable actionable elements presented in a first guided page associated with a workflow of a business activity of the business, wherein user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements in the first guided page results in presenting a second guided page of a data domain associated with the common core dimension other than the data domain associated with the first guided page, and wherein the plurality of guided pages comprise information determined by an industry expert to be pertinent to operation of the business activity; guided page high level description information that facilitates navigation among the plurality of guided pages; and guided page data structure information that facilitates orienting information derived from the data in the data set in an interactive electronic display.

The displayable actionable elements may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. The displayable actionable elements may activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. In an example, data from any of the plurality of data domains that have a common core dimension may be accessed via an actionable element of a guided page that may include data of any of the plurality of data domains that have the common core dimension. In an example, the plurality of data domains may be derived from distinct data models. The distinct data models may include industry-specific data models. In another example, each of the plurality of data domains may be derived from a distinct data model. The distinct data models may include industry-specific data models. In an example, the plurality of guided pages may include groups of diverse-content pages of a business presentation, navigation among the groups being based on a core dimension that may be common to the groups. The pages in a group may be independent of any specific data domain. In an example, the data set may include data from a plurality of data domains derived from a plurality of data sources including customer data sources associated with operating a business and external data sources. The customer data sources comprise at least two sources selected from the list consisting of flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, non-standard formatted data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The external data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of third party feeds, market data, end-user data, state data, county data, regional data, and demo data. In an example, the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. In an example, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. Alternatively, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements may be determined by a combination of factors selected from the set consisting of: input from an industry-specific expert, a role of the user, a workflow of the user, previously presented guided pages, a core dimension associated with a selected actionable element or point of entry; business rules that facilitate configuring the plurality of data domains, candidate next domains, and metadata associated at least one of a presented guided page and a selected actionable element or a point of entry. In an example, the data set may include calculated summaries of data suitable for presentation in a guided page based on the guided page data structure information and non-summarized data that may be processed to comply with the data structure information just prior to being presented in a guided page. Alternatively, the data set may include dimensions, summary fields, and information fields. Further, the data set may include summaries of all data associated with all common core dimensions. Moreover, the data set may include a plurality of core dimensions and a plurality of dynamic dimensions. In an example, a guided page may be presented based on one of the plurality of dynamic dimensions may include processing that data to conform with the guided page data structure information in response to a user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements that may be not required for presenting a guided page based on one of the plurality of core dimensions. In an example, the data set may include at least one central dimension. A central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, a central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. In an example, the data set may include data associated with a variety of access permissions that are automatically granted based on relevancy of the data with at least one of the core dimensions of the data set. The permissions are automatically granted based on a combination of user role, business workflow, and industry requirements configured by an industry expert. In an example, a guided page may include a tabular view of data items, such that, the data items may include actionable elements. Alternatively, a portion of data items may include actionable elements. In another example, a guided page may include a chart with chart elements that represent data associated with a data domain, such that, a portion of chart elements may include actionable elements. In another example, a guided page may include one of an access page, a central page, an overview page, and a list page. The access page may be associated with a core dimension. The central page may be associated with a central dimension. The central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, the central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. The overview page may be associated with a plurality of dimensions. In an example, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an access page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of access pages, central pages, and overview pages. Alternatively, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a central page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, access pages, and list pages. Further, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a list page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, overview pages, and list pages. Moreover, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an overview page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of overview pages, access pages, and list pages.

In another aspect of the methods and systems described herein, a method may include using a processor to access a data set may include data from a plurality of data domains derived from a plurality of industry-specific data models and a plurality of core dimensions relating to parameters of a business, wherein at least one of the plurality of core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains; facilitating direct navigation among the plurality of data domains in response to user interactions with displayable actionable elements presented in a first guided page associated a workflow of a business activity of the business, wherein user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements in the first guided page results in presenting a second guided page of a data domain associated with the common core dimension other than the data domain associated with the first guided page, and wherein the plurality of guided pages comprise information determined by an industry expert to be pertinent to operation of the business activity; facilitating navigation among the plurality of guided pages based on guided page high level description information accessible by the processor; and orienting information derived from the data in the data set in an interactive electronic display based on guided page data structure information that may be accessible by the processor.

The displayable actionable elements may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. Alternatively, the displayable actionable elements activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. In an example, data from any of the plurality of data domains that have a common core dimension can be accessed via an actionable element of a guided page that may include data of any of the plurality of data domains that have the common core dimension. In an example, the plurality of data domains are derived from distinct data models. The distinct data models may include industry-specific data models. In another example, each of the plurality of data domains may be derived from a distinct data model. The distinct data models may include industry-specific data models. In an example, the plurality of guided pages may include groups of diverse-content pages of a business presentation, navigation among the groups being based on a core dimension that may be common to the groups. The pages in a group may be independent of any specific data domain. In an example, the data set may include data from a plurality of data domains may be derived from a plurality of data sources including customer data sources associated with operating a business and external data sources. The customer data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, non-standard formatted data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The external data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of third party feeds, market data, end-user data, state data, county data, regional data, and demo data. In an example, the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may include predetermined by an industry-specific expert. In an example, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. Alternatively, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements may be determined by a combination of factors selected from the set consisting of: input from an industry-specific expert, a role of the user, a workflow of the user, previously presented guided pages, a core dimension associated with a selected actionable element or point of entry; business rules that facilitate configuring the plurality of data domains, candidate next domains, and metadata associated at least one of a presented guided page and a selected actionable element or a point of entry. In an example, the data set may include calculated summaries of data suitable for presentation in a guided page based on the guided page data structure information and non-summarized data that may be processed to comply with the data structure information just prior to being presented in a guided page. Alternatively, the data set may include dimensions, summary fields, and information fields. Further, the data set may include summaries of all data associated with all common core dimensions. Moreover, the data set may include a plurality of core dimensions and a plurality of dynamic dimensions. In an example, presenting a guided page based on one of the plurality of dynamic dimensions may include processing that data to conform with the guided page data structure information in response to a user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements that may be not required for presenting a guided page based on one of the plurality of core dimensions. In an example, the data set may include at least one central dimension. A central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, a central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. In an example, the data set may include data associated with a variety of access permissions that are automatically granted based on relevancy of the data with at least one of the core dimensions of the data set. The permissions are automatically granted based on a combination of user role, business workflow, and industry requirements configured by an industry expert. In an example, a guided page may include a tabular view of data items. The data items may include actionable elements. Further, a portion of data items may include actionable elements. In another example, a guided page may include a chart with chart elements that represent data associated with a data domain, such that, a portion of chart elements may include actionable elements. In another example, a guided page may include one of an access page, a central page, an overview page, and a list page. The access page may be associated with a core dimension. The central page may be associated with a central dimension. The central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, the central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. The overview page may be associated with a plurality of dimensions. In an example, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an access page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of access pages, central pages, and overview pages. Alternatively, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a central page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, access pages, and list pages. Further, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a list page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, overview pages, and list pages. Moreover, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an overview page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of overview pages, access pages, and list pages.

The methods and systems relating to creating a large number of reports for a data set. The reports may represent a wide range of possible views of the data set based on dimensions of data that may be present the data set that may include a range of data sources used by a business including internal and external data sources. The reports may have tables that include dimensions that may be calculated or dynamic, and values or summaries that correspond to those dimensions. In an example, values may be related to the dimensions to which they relate on the screen as presented in a particular report. Further, values may be related other dimensions in the collection of reports that are not shown. In an example, a user may select a dimension or a value. The selection of a presented dimension may give the user the chance to see a report keyed to the presented dimension that may include values and possibly other dimensions that may be associated with the selected dimension. Further, selection of a value may allow a user to see other dimensions that have a relationship with the selected value along with other values that are associated with the other dimensions. In an example, pre-arranged, guided navigation may select what set of new dimensions and values will be shown based on a prescribed flow. The flow may be iterative, such that a user can explore many values and dimensions by moving from value to value and dimension to dimension.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein, a system may include a data set may include a plurality of industry-specific data models derived from a plurality of data sources used to operate a business including business-internal and external data sources; a plurality of guided pages representing a plurality of related views of the data set, wherein the plurality of guided pages are based on dimensions that are present in the data set; a plurality of tables that comprise the dimensions that are present in the data set, values that correspond to dimensions that are common across a plurality of the guided pages, and summaries that correspond to the core dimensions, wherein the dimensions include core dimensions and dynamic dimensions; a plurality of actionable element data values that comprise actionable elements that are selectable by accessing the values; a plurality of points of entry dimensions that comprise points of entry that are selectable by accessing the dimensions, wherein selection of a point of entry in one of the plurality of guided pages results in automatic selection of a table of the plurality of tables that includes at least one of values and at least one other dimension that may be associated with the selected point of entry dimension, and wherein selection of an actionable element in one of the plurality of guided pages results in automatic selection of a table that includes at least one other dimension that has a relationship with the selected actionable element data value and values that are associated with the at least one other dimension; and a navigation map that facilitates determining which next guided page, table, values, and dimensions to present in response to the selection of at least one of an actionable element and a point of entry, wherein the navigation map facilitates user exploration of a plurality of values and a plurality of dimensions by allowing a user to move among values and dimensions of the data set.

In an example, the selection may be performed by a single action in a touch screen user interface. The navigation map may be based on an industry-specific business workflow and a selected guided page may be based on the navigation map and a record of what pages a user has previously viewed. In another example, the selection of an actionable element in a guided page may result in selection of a content item selected from the group consisting of documentation, videos, manuals, sell sheets, images of hard copy documents including purchase orders, shipping documents, and product images. In an example, the plurality of related views may include business-rules-based views. In an example, the plurality of guided pages may represent a plurality of related views of the data set are generated by applying business rules associated with a workflow of a business to access of the plurality of industry-specific data models. The displayable actionable elements may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. Alternatively, the displayable actionable elements may activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. In an example, the points of entry are determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. Alternatively, the points of entry activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for the business activity associated with the data set. In an example, a guided page that may be presented in response to user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements may be based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. The plurality of guided pages may include groups of diverse-content pages of a business presentation, navigation among the groups being based on a core dimension that may be common to the groups. The pages in a group are independent of any specific data domain. In an example, the customer data sources comprise at least two sources selected from the list consisting of flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, non-standard formatted data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. In an example, the external data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of third party feeds, market data, end-user data, state data, county data, regional data, and demo data. The plurality of dimensions may be industry-specific core dimensions and are predetermined by an industry-specific expert. In an example, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. Alternatively, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be determined by a combination of factors selected from the set consisting of: input from an industry-specific expert, a role of the user, a workflow of the user, previously presented guided pages, a core dimension associated with a selected actionable element or point of entry; business rules that facilitate configuring the plurality of data domains, candidate next domains, and metadata associated at least one of a presented guided page and a selected actionable element or a point of entry. The data set may include calculated summaries of data suitable for presentation in a guided page based on the guided page data structure information and non-summarized data that may be processed to comply with the data structure information just prior to being presented in a guided page. In an example, the data set may include dimensions, summary fields, and information fields. Alternatively, the data set may include summaries of all data associated with all common core dimensions. Further, the data set may include at least one central dimension. A central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, a central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. In an example, the data set may include data associated with a variety of access permissions that are automatically granted based on relevancy of the data with at least one of the core dimensions of the data set. The permissions may be automatically granted based on a combination of user role, business workflow, and industry requirements configured by an industry expert. In an example, a guided page may include a tabular view of data items. The guided page may include points of entry as column and row headers of a matrix of data items. The data items may include actionable elements. In an example, a portion of data items may include actionable elements. In an example, a guided page may include a chart with chart elements that represent data associated with a data domain. In an example, a portion of chart elements may include actionable elements. In an example, a guided page may include one of an access page, a central page, an overview page, and a list page. The access page may be associated with a core dimension. The central page may be associated with a central dimension. The central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, the central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. The overview page may be associated with a plurality of dimensions. In an example, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an access page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of access pages, central pages, and overview pages. Alternatively, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a central page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, access pages, and list pages. Further, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a list page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, overview pages, and list pages. Moreover, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an overview page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of overview pages, access pages, and list pages.

In another aspect of the methods and systems described herein, a method may include accessing with a processor a data set may include a plurality of industry-specific data models derived from a plurality of data sources used to operate a business including business-internal and external data sources; generating with the processor a plurality of guided pages representing a plurality of related views of the data set, wherein the plurality of guided pages are based on dimensions that are present in the data set; generating with a processor, for inclusion in a portion of the plurality of guided pages, a plurality of tables that comprise the dimensions that are present in the data set, values that correspond to dimensions that are common across a plurality of the guided pages, and summaries that correspond to the core dimensions, wherein the dimensions include core dimensions and dynamic dimensions; configuring with the processor a plurality of actionable element data values that comprise actionable elements that are selectable by accessing the values; generating with the processor a plurality of points of entry dimensions that comprise points of entry that are selectable by accessing the dimensions, wherein selection of a point of entry in one of the plurality of guided pages results in automatic selection of a table of the plurality of tables that includes at least one of values and at least one other dimension that may be associated with the selected point of entry dimension, and wherein selection of an actionable element in one of the plurality of guided pages results in automatic selection of a table that includes at least one other dimension that has a relationship with the selected actionable element data value and values that are associated with the at least one other dimension; and referencing with the processor a navigation map to determine which next guided page, table, values, and dimensions to present in response to the selection of at least one of an actionable element and a point of entry, wherein the navigation map facilitates user exploration of a plurality of values and a plurality of dimensions by allowing a user to move among values and dimensions of the data set.

The displayable actionable elements may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. The displayable actionable elements may activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. The points of entry activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for the business activity associated with the data set. In an example, a guided page that may be presented in response to user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. The plurality of guided pages may include groups of diverse-content pages of a business presentation, navigation among the groups being based on a core dimension that may be common to the groups. In an example, the pages in a group are independent of any specific data domain. In an example, the data set may include data from a plurality of data domains may be derived from a plurality of data sources including customer data sources associated with operating a business and external data sources. The customer data sources comprise at least two sources selected from the list consisting of flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, non-standard formatted data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The external data sources comprise at least two sources selected from the list consisting of third party feeds, market data, end-user data, state data, county data, regional data, and demo data. In an example, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. Alternatively, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be determined by a combination of factors selected from the set consisting of: input from an industry-specific expert, a role of the user, a workflow of the user, previously presented guided pages, a core dimension associated with a selected actionable element or point of entry; business rules that facilitate configuring the plurality of data domains, candidate next domains, and metadata associated at least one of a presented guided page and a selected actionable element or a point of entry. The data set may include calculated summaries of data suitable for presentation in a guided page based on the guided page data structure information and non-summarized data that may be processed to comply with the data structure information just prior to being presented in a guided page. In an example, the data set may include dimensions, summary fields, and information fields. Alternatively, the data set may include summaries of all data associated with all common core dimensions. Further, the data set may include a plurality of core dimensions and a plurality of dynamic dimensions. In an example, presenting a guided page based on one of the plurality of dynamic dimensions may include processing that data to conform with the guided page data structure information in response to a user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry that may be not required for presenting a guided page based on one of the plurality of core dimensions. In an example, the data set may include at least one central dimension. A central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, a central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. In an example, the data set may include data associated with a variety of access permissions that are automatically granted based on relevancy of the data with at least one of the core dimensions of the data set. The permissions are automatically granted based on a combination of user role, business workflow, and industry requirements configured by an industry expert. In an example, a guided page may include a tabular view of data items. The guided page may include points of entry as column and row headers of a matrix of data items. The data items may include actionable elements. Alternatively, a portion of data items may include actionable elements. In an example, a guided page may include a chart with chart elements that represent data associated with a data domain, such that, a portion of chart elements comprise actionable elements. In another example, a guided page may include one of an access page, a central page, an overview page, and a list page. The access page may be associated with a core dimension. The central page may be associated with a central dimension. The central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, the central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. The overview page may be associated with a plurality of dimensions. In an example, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an access page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of access pages, central pages, and overview pages. Alternatively, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a central page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, access pages, and list pages. Further, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a list page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, overview pages, and list pages. Moreover, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an overview page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of overview pages, access pages, and list pages.

A method may relate to generating an industry-specific data model of time-period based summaries of data of core data dimensions that are determined in a discovery process of data in a data set. The time-period based summaries may be generated for each of a plurality of core dimensions.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein, a method include gathering data from a plurality of data sources including internal data sources associated with operating a business and external data sources; integrating the gathered data with a script-based integrator; determining core dimensions of the gathered data; calculating one or more time-based summaries of data associated with each core dimension; and organizing the time-based summaries into a plurality of distinct model-based data repositories.

In an example, a script for the script-based integrator may be created using a visual integration facility. The internal data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, non-standard formatted data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The external data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of third party feeds, market data, end-user data, state data, county data, regional data, and demo data. In an example, the method may further include configuring a set of business rules for accessing the model-based data repositories and attaching each business rule in the set of business rules for a specific model-based data repository to the specific data repository. Further, the method may include generating a set of guided pages that facilitate navigation in and among a plurality of distinct data domains that are clustered around the core dimensions, wherein the set of guided pages includes pages that comprise the time-based summaries.

The methods and systems relating to associating documents to at least one core dimension and to data clustered around the core dimension so that the documents can be viewed in a tablet-based user interface in response to a user selection of an actionable item in the interface.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein, a system may include a data set may include data from a plurality of data domains, the data set characterized by a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions, wherein at least one of the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains; a plurality of document links, wherein each of the plurality of document links may be associated with at least one data domain and at least one common core dimension shared by at least a pair of documents within the at least one data domain; a plurality of guided pages that facilitate access to documents in a tablet-based user interface through user interactions with displayable actionable elements and points of entry associated with the industry-specific core dimensions, wherein user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements results in accessing a document link that facilitates presenting a document that may be related to a data domain with which the actionable element may be associated, and wherein user interaction with one of the displayable points of entry results in accessing a document link that facilitates presenting a document that may be related to an industry-specific core dimension with which the point of entry may be associated; guided page high level description information that facilitates navigation among the plurality of guided pages and documents; and guided page data structure information that facilitates orienting information derived from the data in the data set in an interactive electronic display.

In an example, the system may further include a document management system organized by at least one of industry, roles of users, company-specific requirements, and product placement. The plurality of guided pages may include groups of diverse-content pages of a business presentation, navigation among the groups being based on a core dimension that may be common to the groups. The selection of a point of entry or an actionable element in a guided page may result in selection of one of the set of content items consisting of documentation, videos, manuals, sell sheets, images of hard copy documents including purchase orders, shipping documents, and product images. The displayable actionable elements may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. Further, the displayable actionable elements activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. The points of entry are determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. Further, the points of entry may activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for the business activity associated with the data set. In an example, data from any of the plurality of data domains that have a common core dimension can be accessed via an actionable element of a guided page that may include data of any of the plurality of data domains that have the common core dimension. The plurality of data domains are derived from distinct data models. The distinct data models comprise industry-specific data models. In an example, each of the plurality of data domains may be derived from a distinct data model. The distinct data models may include industry-specific data models. In an example, a guided page that may be presented in response to user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. The plurality of guided pages may include groups of diverse-content pages of a business presentation, navigation among the groups being based on a core dimension that may be common to the groups. The pages in a group may be independent of any specific data domain. In an example, the data set may include data from a plurality of data domains may be derived from a plurality of data sources including customer data sources associated with operating a business and external data sources. The customer data sources comprise at least two sources selected from the list consisting of flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, non-standard formatted data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The external data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of third party feeds, market data, end-user data, state data, county data, regional data, and demo data. In an example, the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. In an example, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. Alternatively, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be determined by a combination of factors selected from the set consisting of: input from an industry-specific expert, a role of the user, a workflow of the user, previously presented guided pages, a core dimension associated with a selected actionable element or point of entry; business rules that facilitate configuring the plurality of data domains, candidate next domains, and metadata associated at least one of a presented guided page and a selected actionable element or a point of entry. The data set may include calculated summaries of data suitable for presentation in a guided page based on the guided page data structure information and non-summarized data that may be processed to comply with the data structure information just prior to being presented in a guided page. Alternatively, the data set may include dimensions, summary fields, and information fields. Further, the data set may include summaries of all data associated with all common core dimensions. Moreover, the data set may include a plurality of core dimensions and a plurality of dynamic dimensions. In an example, a guided page may be presented based on one of the plurality of dynamic dimensions may include processing that data to conform with the guided page data structure information in response to a user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry that may be not required for presenting a guided page based on one of the plurality of core dimensions. In an example, the data set may include at least one central dimension. The central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, a central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. In an example, the data set may include data associated with a variety of access permissions that are automatically granted based on relevancy of the data with at least one of the core dimensions of the data set. The permissions may be automatically granted based on a combination of user role, business workflow, and industry requirements configured by an industry expert. In an example, a guided page may include a tabular view of data items. The guided page may include points of entry as column and row headers of a matrix of data items. The data items may include actionable elements. Alternatively, a portion of data items may include actionable elements. In an example, a guided page may include a chart with chart elements that represent data associated with a data domain, such that, a portion of chart elements may include actionable elements. In another example, a guided page may include one of an access page, a central page, an overview page, and a list page. The access page may be associated with a core dimension. The central page may be associated with a central dimension. The central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, the central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. The overview page may be associated with a plurality of dimensions. In an example, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an access page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of access pages, central pages, and overview pages. Alternatively, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a central page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, access pages, and list pages. Further, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a list page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, overview pages, and list pages. Moreover, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an overview page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of overview pages, access pages, and list pages.

In another aspect of the methods and systems described herein, a method may include using a processor to access a data set may include data from a plurality of data domains, a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions, wherein at least one of the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains, and a plurality of document links, wherein each of the plurality of document links may be associated with at least one data domain and at least one common core dimension shared by at least a pair of documents within the at least one data domain; facilitating access to documents via a plurality of guided pages in a tablet-based user interface through user interactions with displayable actionable elements or points of entry associated with the industry-specific core dimensions presented in the plurality of guided pages, wherein user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements results in accessing a document link that facilitates presenting a document that may be related to a data domain with which the actionable element may be associated, and wherein user interaction with one of the displayable points of entry results in accessing a document link that facilitates presenting a document that may be related to an industry-specific core dimension with which the point of entry may be associated; facilitating navigation among the plurality of guided pages based on guided page high level description information accessible by the processor; and orienting information derived from the data in the data set in an interactive electronic display based on guided page data structure information that may be accessible by the processor.

The displayable actionable elements may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. Further, the displayable actionable elements may activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. The points of entry may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. Further, the points of entry may activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for the business activity associated with the data set. In an example, data from any of the plurality of data domains that have a common core dimension may be accessed via an actionable element of a guided page that may include data of any of the plurality of data domains that have the common core dimension. In an example, the plurality of data domains may be derived from distinct data models. The distinct data models may include industry-specific data models. In an example, each of the plurality of data domains may be derived from a distinct data model. The distinct data models may include industry-specific data models. In an example, a guided page presented in response to user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of access may be based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. In an example, the plurality of guided pages may include groups of diverse-content pages of a business presentation, navigation among the groups being based on a core dimension that may be common to the groups. The pages in a group may be independent of any specific data domain. In an example, the data set may include data from a plurality of data domains derived from a plurality of data sources including customer data sources associated with operating a business and external data sources. The customer data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, non-standard formatted data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The external data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of third party feeds, market data, end-user data, state data, county data, regional data, and demo data. In an example, the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. In an example, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. Alternatively, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be determined by a combination of factors selected from the set consisting of: input from an industry-specific expert, a role of the user, a workflow of the user, previously presented guided pages, a core dimension associated with a selected actionable element or point of entry; business rules that facilitate configuring the plurality of data domains, candidate next domains, and metadata associated at least one of a presented guided page and a selected actionable element or a point of entry. In an example, the data set may include calculated summaries of data suitable for presentation in a guided page based on the guided page data structure information and non-summarized data that may be processed to comply with the data structure information just prior to being presented in a guided page. In another example, the data set may include dimensions, summary fields, and information fields. Further, the data set may include summaries of all data associated with all common core dimensions. Moreover, the data set may include a plurality of core dimensions and a plurality of dynamic dimensions. A guided page may be presented based on one of the plurality of dynamic dimensions may include processing that data to conform with the guided page data structure information in response to a user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry that may be not required for presenting a guided page based on one of the plurality of core dimensions. In an example, the data set may include at least one central dimension. A central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, a central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. In an example, the data set may include data associated with a variety of access permissions that are automatically granted based on relevancy of the data with at least one of the core dimensions of the data set. The permissions may be automatically granted based on a combination of user role, business workflow, and industry requirements configured by an industry expert. In an example, a guided page may include a tabular view of data items, such that the guided page may include points of entry as column and row headers of a matrix of data items. The data items may include actionable elements. Alternatively, a portion of data items may include actionable elements. In an example, a guided page may include a chart with chart elements that represent data associated with a data domain. Further, a portion of chart elements may include actionable elements. In an example, a guided page may include one of an access page, a central page, an overview page, and a list page. The access page may be associated with a core dimension. The central page may be associated with a central dimension. The central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. Alternatively, the central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. The overview page may be associated with a plurality of dimensions. In an example, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an access page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of access pages, central pages, and overview pages. Alternatively, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a central page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, access pages, and list pages. Further, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a list page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, overview pages, and list pages. Moreover, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an overview page results in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of overview pages, access pages, and list pages.

The methods and systems relating to creating a large number of reports for a data set. The reports represent a wide range of possible views of the data set based on dimensions of data that may be present the data set that comprises a range of data sources used by a business including internal and external data sources. The reports may have tables that have dimensions that may be calculated or dynamic, and values or summaries that correspond to those dimensions. The values may be related to the dimensions to which they relate on the screen as presented in a particular report. Further, values may include other dimensions in the collection of reports that are not shown. In an example, a user can select a dimension or a value. The selection of a presented dimension gives the user the chance to see a report keyed to the presented dimension that includes values and possibly other dimensions that are associated with the selected dimension. Further, selection of a value may allow a user to see other dimensions that have a relationship with the selected value along with other values that are associated with the other dimensions. In an example, pre-arranged, guided navigation selects what set of new dimensions and values will be shown based on a prescribed flow

In an example, the system may include a data set including a plurality of industry-specific data models derived from a plurality of data sources used to operate a business including business-internal and external data sources. The system may further include a plurality of guided pages representing a plurality of related views of the data set, wherein the plurality of guided pages may be based on dimensions that may be present in the data set. The system may further include a plurality of tables that may include the dimensions that may be present in the data set, values that may correspond to dimensions that may be common across a plurality of the guided pages, and summaries that may correspond to the core dimensions. The dimensions may include core dimensions and dynamic dimensions. The system may further include a plurality of actionable element data values that may include actionable elements that are may be selectable by accessing the values. The system may further include a plurality of points of entry dimensions that may include points of entry that may be selectable by accessing the dimensions. The selection of a point of entry in one of the plurality of guided pages may result in automatic selection of a table of the plurality of tables that may include at least one of values and at least one other dimension that may be associated with the selected point of entry dimension, and wherein selection of an actionable element in one of the plurality of guided pages may result in automatic selection of a table that may include at least one other dimension that may have a relationship with the selected actionable element data value and values that may be associated with the at least one other dimension. The system may further include a navigation map that may facilitate determining which next guided page, table, values, and dimensions to present in response to the selection of at least one of an actionable element and a point of entry.

The displayable actionable elements may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. The displayable actionable elements may activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. The points of entry may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. The points of entry may activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for the business activity associated with the data set. A guided page that is presented in response to user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. The plurality of guided pages may include groups of diverse-content pages of a business presentation, navigation among the groups being based on a core dimension that is common to the groups. The pages in a group may be independent of any specific data domain. The data set may include data from a plurality of data domains and is derived from a plurality of data sources including customer data sources associated with operating a business and external data sources. The customer data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, non-standard formatted data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The external data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of third party feeds, market data, end-user data, state data, county data, regional data, and demo data. The plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. A result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. In an example, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be determined by a combination of factors selected from the set consisting of: input from an industry-specific expert, a role of the user, a workflow of the user, previously presented guided pages, a core dimension associated with a selected actionable element or point of entry; business rules that facilitate configuring a plurality of data domains, candidate next domains, and metadata associated at least one of a presented guided page and a selected actionable element or a point of entry. The data set may include calculated summaries of data suitable for presentation in a guided page based on the guided page data structure information and non-summarized data that may be processed to comply with the data structure information just prior to being presented in a guided page. The data set may include dimensions, summary fields, and information fields. The data set may include summaries of all data associated with all common core dimensions. The data set may include a plurality of core dimensions and a plurality of dynamic dimensions. The presenting of a guided page based on one of the plurality of dynamic dimensions may include processing that data to conform with the guided page data structure information in response to a user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry that may not be required for presenting a guided page based on one of the plurality of core dimensions. The data set may include at least one central dimension. A central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains may be clustered. In an example, a central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that may represent a subset of data associated with a core dimension. The data set may include data associated with a variety of access permissions that may be automatically granted based on relevancy of the data with at least one of the core dimensions of the data set. The permissions may be automatically granted based on a combination of user role, business workflow, and industry requirements configured by an industry expert. In an example, a guided page may include a tabular view of data items. The guided page may include points of entry as column and row headers of a matrix of data items. The data items may include actionable elements. A portion of data items may include actionable elements. A guided page may include a chart with chart elements that may represent data associated with a data domain. A portion of chart elements may include actionable elements. A guided page may include one of an access page, a central page, an overview page, and a list page. The access page may be associated with a core dimension. The central page may be associated with a central dimension. The central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains can be clustered. The central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension. The overview page may be associated with a plurality of dimensions. In an example, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an access page may result in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of access pages, central pages, and overview pages. A user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a central page may result in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, access pages, and list pages. In an example, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a list page may result in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, overview pages, and list pages. In an example, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an overview page may result in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of overview pages, access pages, and list pages.

In an example, a method is disclosed that includes accessing with a processor a data set comprising a plurality of industry-specific data models derived from a plurality of data sources used to operate a business including business-internal and external data sources. The method may further include generating with the processor a plurality of guided pages representing a plurality of related views of the data set, wherein the plurality of guided pages may be based on dimensions that may be present in the data set. The method may include generating with a processor, for inclusion in a portion of the plurality of guided pages, a plurality of tables that may include the dimensions that may be present in the data set, values that may correspond to dimensions that may be common across a plurality of the guided pages, and summaries that may correspond to the core dimensions. The dimensions may include core dimensions and dynamic dimensions. The method may include configuring with the processor a plurality of actionable element data values that may include actionable elements that may be selectable by accessing the values. The method may include generating with the processor a plurality of points of entry dimensions that may include points of entry that are selectable by accessing the dimensions. The selection of a point of entry in one of the plurality of guided pages may result in automatic selection of a table of the plurality of tables that may include at least one of values and at least one other dimension that may be associated with the selected point of entry dimension, and wherein selection of an actionable element in one of the plurality of guided pages may result in automatic selection of a table that may include at least one other dimension that may have a relationship with the selected actionable element data value and values that may be associated with the at least one other dimension. The method may include referencing with the processor a navigation map to determine which next guided page, table, values, and dimensions to present in response to the selection of at least one of an actionable element and a point of entry.

The displayable actionable elements may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. The displayable actionable elements may activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. The points of entry may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map. The method points of entry may activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for the business activity associated with the data set. A guided page that is presented in response to user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be based on a workflow for a business activity associated with the data set. The plurality of guided pages may include groups of diverse-content pages of a business presentation, navigation among the groups being based on a core dimension that is common to the groups. The pages in a group may be independent of any specific data domain. The data set may include data from a plurality of data domains and may be derived from a plurality of data sources including customer data sources associated with operating a business and external data sources. The customer data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, non-standard formatted data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The external data sources may include at least two sources selected from the list consisting of third party feeds, market data, end-user data, state data, county data, regional data, and demo data. The plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. In an example, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be predetermined by an industry-specific expert. In an example, a result of user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry may be determined by a combination of factors selected from the set consisting of: input from an industry-specific expert, a role of the user, a workflow of the user, previously presented guided pages, a core dimension associated with a selected actionable element or point of entry; business rules that may facilitate configuring a plurality of data domains, candidate next domains, and metadata associated at least one of a presented guided page and a selected actionable element or a point of entry. The data set may include calculated summaries of data suitable for presentation in a guided page based on the guided page data structure information and non-summarized data that may be processed to comply with the data structure information just prior to being presented in a guided page. The data set may include dimensions, summary fields, and information fields. The data set may include summaries of all data associated with all common core dimensions. The data set may include a plurality of core dimensions and a plurality of dynamic dimensions. The method of presenting a guided page based on one of the plurality of dynamic dimensions may include processing that data to conform with the guided page data structure information in response to a user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements or points of entry that may not be required for presenting a guided page based on one of the plurality of core dimensions. The data set may include at least one central dimension. In an example, a central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains may be clustered. In an example, a central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that may represent a subset of data associated with a core dimension. The data set may include data associated with a variety of access permissions that may be automatically granted based on relevancy of the data with at least one of the core dimensions of the data set. The permissions may be automatically granted based on a combination of user role, business workflow, and industry requirements configured by an industry expert. In an example, a guided page may include a tabular view of data items. The guided page may include points of entry as column and row headers of a matrix of data items. The data items may include actionable elements. A portion of data items may include actionable elements. In an example, a guided page may include a chart with chart elements that may represent data associated with a data domain. A portion of chart elements may include actionable elements. In an example, a guided page may include one of an access page, a central page, an overview page, and a list page. The access page may be associated with a core dimension. The central page may be associated with a central dimension. The central dimension may include a logical grouping of data in the data set around which core dimensions, dynamic dimensions, and data domains may be clustered. The central dimension may include a logical grouping of data that may represent a subset of data associated with a core dimension. The overview page may be associated with a plurality of dimensions. In an example, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an access page may result in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of access pages, central pages, and overview pages. In an example, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a central page may result in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, access pages, and list pages. In an example, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on a list page may result in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of central pages, overview pages, and list pages. In an example, a user selection of an actionable element or point of entry on an overview page may result in presenting a guided page selected from the set consisting of overview pages, access pages, and list pages.

The methods and systems relating to updating a set of guided pages for operation of a business activity based on a workflow for the activity, industry expertise, and a plurality of models of source data that may be relevant to the business activity. A point of entry to access the guided pages may be organized around one or more industry-specific data dimensions. A client-server synchronization may be updated may be based on per-guided page cache tags managed and exchanged between client and server during synchronization.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein, a method includes generating with a server a plurality of guided pages for operation of a business activity based on a workflow for the activity, industry expertise, and a plurality of models of source data that may be relevant to the business activity. The points of entry to navigate among the guided pages may be organized around one or more industry-specific data dimensions. The method further includes associating a cache tag with each page of the plurality of guided pages. The method further includes transmitting the generated plurality of guided pages and the associated cache tags to a client device during a first synchronization operation. The method further includes updating a portion of the plurality of guided pages with the server and generating a set of updated cache tags for the updated guided pages. The method further includes receiving cache tags from the client device that indicate the guided pages that may be present on the client device. The method further includes comparing the received cache tags with the set of updated cache tags to determine updated guided pages that may be not present on the client. The method further includes transmitting the determined updated guided pages and an updated cache tag for each of the determined updated guided pages to the client during a second synchronization operation.

In addition, the cache tags received from the client device includes cache tags of requested guided pages. The step of comparing with the server may receive cache tags to cache tags transmitted to the client device and transmitting guided pages for the received cache tags that do not match to any of the cache tags transmitted to the client device. The cache tags received from the client device includes cache tags of guided pages that may have changed on the client device since the last synchronization operation. Alternatively, the step of comparing with the server may receive cache tags to cache tags transmitted to the client device and receiving guided pages for the received cache tags that indicate that the guided pages have changed on the client device since the last synchronization operation. Alternatively, the step of comparing with the server may receive cache tags to cache tags transmitted to the client device and receiving guided pages for the received cache tags that indicate that the guided pages have changed on the client device since the last synchronization operation.

The methods and systems relating to presenting alternate views of summarized data that include enabling selection among a variety of dimensions of the summarized data.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein, the method includes using a processor to present a guided page with a summary column of data from a data set including data from a plurality of data domains and a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions. The at least one of the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains. The method further includes facilitating data discovery through user interactions with a column heading of the summary column that may be presented by the processor on an interactive electronic display. The user interaction with the column heading results in expanding the summary column to present an alternate view of the data in the data set that may be summarized in the summary column. The alternate view may be selectable from a plurality of data domains that share the common industry-specific core dimension.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein, described herein may be a method including facilitating data discovery through user interactions with a column heading of the summary column that may be presented by the processor on an interactive electronic display. The user interaction with the column heading results in expanding the summary column to present an alternate view of the data in the data set that may be summarized in the summary column. The alternate view may be selectable from a plurality of data domains that share the common industry-specific core dimension.

In addition, the guided page may be one of an access page and a list page. The method further includes expanding the summary column to present an alternate view of the data in the data set may be performed without requiring access to the data set. The alternate view may be further selectable from a plurality of time-based subsets of the summarized data. In addition, a selected time-based subset may be presented in the expanded column without requiring access to the data set.

The methods and systems relating to configuring a set of guided pages for operation of a business activity based on a workflow for the activity, industry expertise, and a plurality of models of source data that may be relevant to the business activity. Each page of the set of guided pages may be organized around one or more industry-specific data dimension.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein, described herein may be a method using a processor to access a data set including data from a plurality of data domains derived from a plurality of industry-specific data models and a plurality of dimensions of a business. The at least one of the plurality of dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains. The method further includes generating with a processor a plurality of guided pages that may include data from at least one of a plurality of data domains, actionable elements and points of entry being associated with a workflow of a business activity of the business and facilitating presenting other guided pages including at least one of data related to at least one of the plurality of data domains and data related to a common dimension. The plurality of guided pages includes information may be determined by an industry expert to be pertinent to operation of the business activity. The method includes processing guided page high level description information to facilitate navigation among the plurality of guided pages. The method further includes orienting information derived from the data in the data set in an interactive electronic display based on guided page data structure information that may be accessible by the processor.

In addition, the plurality of models may be non-hierarchical models. The plurality of models may be freeform data models. The plurality of models may be structured for rapid access. The rapid access may be performed by a diver facility. The at least one of the one or more common dimensions may be a core data dimension. The at least one of the one or more common dimensions may be a dynamic dimension. The at least one page of the plurality of guided pages may be a presentation object. The presentation object may be a portion of a document.

The methods and systems relating to configuring a set of guided documents for operation of a business activity based on a workflow for the activity, industry expertise, and a plurality of models of source data that may be relevant to the business activity. In an example, a point of entry to access the guided documents may be organized around one or more industry-specific data dimensions.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein, described herein may be a method using a processor to access a data set including data from a plurality of data domains, a plurality of industry-specific dimensions, wherein at least one of the plurality of industry-specific dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains, and a plurality of document links. The each of the plurality of document links may be associated with at least one data domain and at least one common dimension. The method further includes generating a plurality of guided pages, a plurality of displayable actionable elements, and a plurality of points of entry associated with the industry-specific dimensions. The displayable actionable elements facilitate accessing a document link that facilitates presenting a document that may be related to a data domain with which the actionable element may be associated. The displayable points of entry facilitate accessing a document link that facilitates presenting a document that may be related to an industry-specific dimension with which the point of entry may be associated. The method further includes processing guided page high level description information to facilitate navigation among the plurality of guided pages. The method further includes orienting information derived from the data in the data set for presentation in an interactive electronic display based on guided page data structure information that may be accessible by the processor.

In addition, the plurality of models may be non-hierarchical models. The plurality of models may be freeform data models. The plurality of models may be structured for rapid access. The rapid access may be performed by a diver facility. The at least one of the one or more industry-specific data dimensions may be a core data dimension. The at least one of the one or more industry-specific data dimensions may be a dynamic dimension.

The methods and systems relating to configuring navigation map for navigation among a set of guided pages for operation of a business activity allowing freeform data discovery. The methods and systems may be based on a modeling method including multi-source data collection, script-based data integration, industry-specific core data dimension discovery; data modeling to provide rapid access to domains of data that may be relevant to the business activity; and industry-specific business rules.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein, described herein may be a system of preconfigured page-to-page navigation. The system may include a data set derived through a modeling process that includes integration of data sourced from a plurality of data sourced into a plurality of domain-specific data models that may be relevant to a business activity, the data set characterized by data having a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions. The at least one of the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be common to at least two of a plurality of data domains derived from the domain-specific data models. The system further includes a navigation map for facilitating navigation among a set of guided pages representing a plurality of related views of the data set and based on dimensions that may be present in the data set. The navigation map may be based on an industry-specific business workflow and a next guided page may be based on the navigation map and a record of what pages a user has previously viewed. In addition, the multi-source data collection includes integrating data from a plurality of disparate data sources.

The methods and systems relating to a data page generation engine for presenting a set of business activity guided pages of data from industry-specific data models, wherein the pages include actionable elements and points of entry that may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map and that activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for the business activity.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein, described herein may be a method of generating a guided data page. The method includes receiving with a processor a user selection of an actionable element that may be presented in a guided page on a touch screen user interface. The actionable element may be associated with at least one core dimension of a set of data, a portion of which may be depicted in the guided page. The method further includes accessing with a processor a navigation map for facilitating navigation among a set of the guided pages that represent a plurality of related views of the data set based on dimensions that may be present in the data set. The navigation map may be based on an industry-specific business workflow associated with the data set. The method further includes generating a next guided page based on the navigation map, the user selection, a dimension associated with the user selection, and a record of what pages a user has previously viewed. The next guided page includes a table of data entries derived from the data set.

The methods and systems relating to a content page generation engine for presenting a set of business activity guided pages of content based on models of data associated with the business activity. The pages may include actionable elements and points of entry that may be determined based on an industry knowledge directed navigation map and that activate pathways to areas of interest based on a workflow for the business activity.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein, described herein may be a method for generating a guided content page. The method includes receiving with a processor a user selection of an actionable element that may be presented in a guided page on a touch screen user interface. The actionable element may be associated with at least one core dimension of a set of data, a portion of which may be depicted in the guided page. The method further includes accessing with a processor a navigation map for facilitating navigation among a set of the guided pages that represent a plurality of related views of the data set based on dimensions that may be present in the data set. The navigation map may be based on an industry-specific business workflow associated with the data set. The method further includes generating a next guided page based on the navigation map, the user selection, a dimension associated with the user selection, and a record of what pages a user has previously viewed, wherein the next guided page includes a non-tabular content.

The methods and systems relating to a set of guided pages for operation of a business activity wherein the pages include row and column headings that represent data associated with at least one of industry-specific data dimensions and domains related to a core data dimension. Each of the row heading, each column heading, and each intersecting cell may be a point of entry to a guided page that includes at least one of data and other content related to the point of entry.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein described herein, may be a set of guided pages for operation of a business activity. Each of the sets includes a tabular arrangement of data values including row headings and column headings. The at least one of the row headings and the column headings represent data associated with at least one of industry-specific data dimensions and data domains related to a core data dimension. Each set further includes a plurality of actionable elements disposed on at least one of a portion of the row headings, a portion of the column headings, and a portion of the plurality of data values disposed at each intersection of a row and column in the tabular arrangement. Each of the plurality of actionable elements enables access to a guided page, in the set of guided pages, that includes at least one of data and other content related to the row heading, column heading, or data value on which the actionable element may be disposed.

In addition, the data dimension may be a core data dimension. The data dimension may be a core data dimension. The row and column headings may represent data associated with the same data dimension. The row and column headings may represent data associated with the same data domain. The column headings represent data associated with an industry-specific data dimension and row headings represent data associated with a data domain. The column headings represent data associated with a data domain and the row headings represent data associated with an industry-specific data dimension.

The methods and systems relating to a user interface displaying tabular data, wherein upon selecting a data item in the table, a user may be presented with a new data domain and set of dimensions that have been pre-determined by an analyst to be likely to be relevant to the user based on the business context of the user and prior navigation steps of the user within the interface.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein described herein may be a system including a data set including a plurality of industry-specific data models derived from a plurality of data sources used to operate a business including business-internal and external data sources, the data set characterized by data having a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions, wherein at least one of the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains. The system further includes a user interface displaying a data table that includes the dimensions that may be present in the data set, values that correspond to dimensions that may be common across the plurality of the data domains, and summaries that correspond to the core dimensions. In addition, upon selecting a data item in the table, a user may be presented with a new data table representing a data domain and a set of dimensions that have been pre-determined by an analyst to be likely to be relevant to the user based on the business context of the user and prior navigation steps of the user within the interface.

The methods and systems relating to a user interface displaying graphical data, wherein upon selecting an item in the graph, a user may be presented with a new data domain and set of dimensions that have been pre-determined by an analyst to be likely to be relevant to the user based on the business context of the user and prior navigation steps of the user within the interface.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein described herein may be a system including a data set including a plurality of industry-specific data models derived from a plurality of data sources used to operate a business including business-internal and external data sources. The data set may be characterized by data having a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions. The at least one of the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains. The system may include a user interface displaying a data graph that may be based on the dimensions that may be present in the data set that may be common across the plurality of the data domains. The system may be configured such as upon selecting a data graph item, a user may be presented with a new data graph representing a data domain and set of dimensions that have been pre-determined by an analyst to be likely to be relevant to the user based on the business context of the user and prior navigation steps of the user within the interface.

The methods and systems relating to a user interface displaying document content, wherein upon selecting an actionable item in the user interface, a user may be presented with document content from a new data domain and set of dimensions that have been pre-determined by an analyst to be likely to be relevant to the user based on the business context of the user and prior navigation steps of the user within the interface.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein described herein may be a system including a data set including a plurality of industry-specific data models derived from a plurality of data sources used to operate a business including business-internal and external data sources. The data set may be characterized by data having a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions. The at least one of the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains. The system further includes a user interface displaying a document content that may be based on the dimensions that may be present in the data set that may be common across the plurality of the data domains, wherein upon selecting a portion of the document content, a user may be presented with a new document content representing a data domain and set of dimensions that have been pre-determined by an analyst to be likely to be relevant to the user based on the business context of the user and prior navigation steps of the user within the interface.

The methods and systems relating to a tablet-based user interface having data that may be presented with associated dimensions, pre-defining a navigational transition from a first page to a receiving page. The dimensions of the receiving page may be determined based on the data selected by a user in the interface. The data on the receiving page may be filtered based on prior actions of the user in the user interface.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein described herein, may be a tablet-based user interface including a data set including data from a plurality of data domains, the data set may be characterized by data having a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions. The at least one of the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains. The tablet-based user interface may further include a plurality of guided pages having data values associated with at least one of the plurality of data domains that may be presented with an associated core dimension in the tablet-based user interface. The user selection of a data value results in presenting a guided page in the tablet-based user interface that has at least one dimension based on the selected data value and data values that may be filtered based on prior actions of the user in the tablet-based user interface.

The methods and systems relating to a tablet-based user interface having a graph that may be presented with associated dimensions, pre-defining a navigational transition from a first page to a receiving page. The dimensions of the received page may be determined based on an item selected by a user in the interface and wherein the data on the receiving page may be filtered based on prior actions of the user in the user interface.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein described herein may be a tablet-based user interface including a data set including data from a plurality of data domains. The data set may be characterized by data having a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions. The at least one of the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains. The tablet-based user interface may further include a plurality of guided pages having data graph items associated with at least one of the plurality of data domains that may be presented with an associated core dimension in the tablet-based user interface. The user selection of a data graph item results in presenting a guided page in the tablet-based user interface that has at least one dimension based on the selected data graph item and data graph items that may be filtered based on prior actions of the user in the tablet-based user interface.

The methods and systems relating to a tablet-based user interface having content that may be presented with associated dimensions, pre-defining a navigational transition from a first page to a receiving page. The dimensions of the received page may be determined based on an item selected by a user in the interface. The data on the received page may be filtered based on prior actions of the user in the user interface.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein described herein may be a tablet-based user interface including a data set including data from a plurality of data domains, the data set characterized by data having a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions. The least one of the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains. The tablet-based user interface further includes a plurality of guided pages having content items including at least one of audio content, video content, and document content. The content may be associated with at least one of the plurality of data domains that may be presented with an associated core dimension in the tablet-based user interface. The user selection of a content item results in presenting a guided page in the tablet-based user interface that has at least one dimension based on the selected content item and content items that may be filtered based on prior actions of the user in the tablet-based user interface.

The methods and systems relating to a large number of reports may be created for a data set. In an example, the reports may represent a wide range of possible views of the data set based on dimensions of data that may be available for the data set that includes a range of data sources used by a business including internal and external data sources. In an example, the reports may have tables that have dimensions that may be calculated or dynamic, and values or summaries that correspond to those dimensions. In an example, the values may be related to the dimensions to which they relate on the screen as presented in a particular report. Further, the values that may be related to the dimensions to many other dimensions in the collection of reports that may be not shown. In an example, a user can select a dimension or a value. In an example, selecting a presented dimension gives the user a chance to see a report keyed to the presented dimension that may include values and possibly other dimensions that may be associated with the selected dimension. In an example, selecting a value allows a user to see other dimensions that may have a relationship with the selected value along with other values that may be associated with the other dimensions. In an example, a pre-arranged guided navigation selects what set of new dimensions and values will be shown based on a prescribed flow.

The methods and systems relating to a large number of reports may be created for a data set. In an example, the reports represent a wide range of possible views of the data set based on dimensions of data that may be present/available the data set that includes a range of data sources used by a business including internal and external data sources. In an example, the reports have graphs of values or summaries that correspond to the dimensions, which may be calculated or dynamic. In an example, values may be related to the dimensions to which they may be graphed on the screen as presented in a particular report. Further, the values may be related to the dimensions in the collection of reports that may be not shown. In an example, a user may select a dimension or a graphed value. In an example, selecting a presented dimension gives the user the chance to see a report keyed to the presented dimension that includes graphs and possibly other dimensions that may be associated with the selected dimension. In an example, selecting a graphed value allows a user to see other dimensions that have a relationship with the selection along with other graphed values that may be associated with the other dimensions. In an example, pre-arranged, guided navigation selects what set of new dimensions and graphed values will be shown based on a prescribed flow.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein described herein may be a system including a data set including a plurality of industry-specific data models derived from a plurality of data sources used to operate a business including business-internal and external data sources. The system further includes a plurality of graphs based on the dimensions that may be present in the data set. In an example, the graphs may represent values that correspond to dimensions that may be common across a plurality of the graphs and summaries that correspond to the core dimensions. The dimensions include core dimensions and dynamic dimensions. The system further includes a plurality of actionable element graph items that includes actionable elements that may be selectable by accessing the graph items. In an example, the actionable elements may be associated with at least one of a dimension and a data domain of the data set. In an example, selection of an actionable element associated with a dimension results in automatic selection of a new graph from the plurality of graphs that may be associated with the dimension with which the selected actionable element may be associated. In an example, the selection of an actionable element associated with a data domain results in automatic selection of a new graph from the plurality of graphs that may be associated with the data domain with which the selected actionable element may be associated. The system further includes a navigation map that facilitates determining which next graph to present in response to the selection of an actionable element.

The methods and systems relating to a large number of content items associated with a data set may be gathered and adapted for viewing in a tablet user interface. In an example, the content items may be associated with a wide range of possible views of the data set based on dimensions of data that may be available in the data set that includes a range of data sources used by a business including internal and external data sources. In an example, the content items may be further associated with values or summaries that correspond to the dimensions, which may be calculated or dynamic. In an example, the content items may be presented with a portion of the associated dimensions or values. In an example, the content items may be associated with many other dimensions that may be not shown. In an example, a user may select a content item in the user interface to see other content items, associated dimensions, or values associated with the selection. In an example, a pre-arranged, guided navigation selects what will be shown based on a prescribed flow.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein described herein may be a system including a data set including a plurality of industry-specific data models derived from a plurality of data sources used to operate a business including business-internal and external data sources. The system further includes a plurality of content pages including at least one of audio content, video content, and document content. In an example, the content pages may be based on the dimensions that may be present in the data set. In an example, the content pages may represent values that may correspond to dimensions that may be common across a plurality of the content pages and summaries that correspond to the core dimensions. In an example, the dimensions include core dimensions and dynamic dimensions. The system further includes a plurality of actionable element content items that may includes actionable elements that may be selectable by accessing the content items, the actionable elements associated with at least one of a dimension and a data domain of the data set. In an example, the selection of an actionable element associated with a dimension results in automatic selection of a new content page from the plurality of content pages that may be associated with the dimension with which the selected actionable element may be associated. In an example, the selection of an actionable element associated with a data domain results in automatic selection of a new content page from the plurality of content pages that may be associated with the data domain with which the selected actionable element may be associated. The system further includes a navigation map that facilitates determining which next content page to present in response to the selection of an actionable element.

The methods and systems relating to a method of generating a set of guided pages for operation of a business activity including gathering data from a wide range of data sources into a data repository; integrating data with a script-based domain editor. A script for the script-based editor may be generated based on use of a visual integration facility. The method includes determining dimensions of the data, including determining dynamic dimensions. The method includes determining associations of data with dimensions. The method includes calculating one or more of data values and summaries for the dimensions. The method includes organizing the data into model-based data repositories. The method includes configuring a set of business rules for accessing the model-based data repositories. The method includes generating a plurality of linkable pages that may be suitable for presentation on a tablet computing device. The method includes determining permissible links among the plurality of linkable pages. The method includes associating particular links with actionable points of entry in the guided pages to suit a workflow for a particular business activity.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein described herein may be a method of generating a set of guided pages for operation of a business activity. The method includes gathering data from a wide range of data sources into a data repository. The method includes integrating data with a script-based domain editor. In an example, script for the script-based editor may be generated based on use of a visual integration facility. The method includes determining dimensions of the data, including determining dynamic dimensions. The method includes determining associations of data with dimensions. The method includes calculating one or more of data values and summaries for the dimensions. The method includes organizing the data into model-based data repositories. The method includes configuring a set of business rules for accessing the model-based data repositories. The method includes generating a plurality of linkable pages that may be suitable for presentation on a tablet computing device. The method includes determining permissible links among the plurality of linkable pages. The method includes associating particular links with actionable points of entry in the guided pages to suit a workflow for a particular business activity.

In addition the step of determining dimensions of the data includes determining core dimensions. In an example, determining associations of data with dimensions includes determining associations of data with core dimensions. In an example, the linkable pages present data and dimensions in a tabular format. In an example, the linkable pages present graphical representations of data and dimensions in a graphical format. In an example, the linkable pages present document image content associated with the workflow. The method further includes further includes calculating data summaries to facilitate guided page generation based on a dynamic dimension.

The methods and systems relating to summarizing data into time period buckets for each of a plurality of core data dimensions that may be determined in a discovery and modeling process of data in a data set so that a page generation engine serves time summarized pages for at least one of the core data dimension without requiring access to the data set.

The methods and systems relating to a method of generating a set of industry-specific models of time-period based data summaries for operation of a business activity including gathering data from a wide range of data sources into a data repository. The method further includes integrating data with a script-based domain editor, wherein a script for the script-based editor may be generated based on use of a visual integration facility. The method further includes determining dimensions of the data, including determining dynamic dimensions. The method further includes determining associations of data with dimensions. The method further includes calculating one or more of data values and summaries for the dimensions, including time-period based summaries. The method further includes organizing the data into model-based data repositories. The method further includes configuring a set of business rules for accessing the model-based data repositories.

The methods and systems relating to the method above further include generating a plurality of linkable pages that may be suitable for presentation on a tablet computing device. The method further includes determining permissible links among the plurality of linkable pages. The method further includes associating particular links with actionable points of entry in the guided pages to suit a workflow for a particular business activity.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein described may be a method of generating a set of industry-specific models of time-period based data summaries for operation of a business activity. The method includes gathering data from a wide range of data sources into a data repository. The method further includes integrating data with a script-based domain editor. A script for the script-based editor may be generated based on use of a visual integration facility. The method further includes determining dimensions of the data, including determining dynamic dimensions. The method further includes determining associations of data with dimensions. The method further includes calculating one or more of data values and summaries for the dimensions, including time-period based summaries. The method further includes organizing the data into model-based data repositories. The method further includes configuring a set of business rules for accessing the model-based data repositories.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein described may be a method including generating a plurality of linkable pages that may be suitable for presentation on a tablet computing device. The method further includes determining permissible links among the plurality of linkable pages. The method further includes associating particular links with actionable points of entry in the guided pages to suit a workflow for a particular business activity.

The methods and systems relating to processing data from distinct data domains to facilitate determining at least one core dimension that may be common to a portion of the distinct data domains that are captured in distinct data models and linking the distinct data models in a guided page navigation map that enables navigation within and among the distinct data models via the common core dimension.

The data from any one of the distinct data models can be accessed via data associated with the common core dimension from any other of the distinct data models.

The methods and systems relating to presenting in a guided page user interface data associated with a core dimension of a first data model in response to a [user] selection in the guided page user interface of an item [of data] from a second data model, wherein the first and second data models represent different data domains and wherein the item of data is associated with the core dimension.

The methods and systems relating to a guided page user interface that enables presenting items of data from a first data domain, and in response to a user selection of a presented item of data, presenting items of data from a second data domain based on the first and second data domains having a common core dimension.

The first and second data domains are distinct domains. The selected item of data is associated with the common core dimension. The common core dimension is determined during data discovery of a plurality of data sources representing the first and second data domains. The user interface is adapted to access at least two distinct data models representing the first data domain and the second data domain.

The methods and systems relating to automated identification of navigation among pages across distinct models and data domains that share a common core dimension and based on historical user actions.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein described herein may be a method of automated update of a navigation map for facilitating navigation among a plurality of guided pages. The method includes collecting transitions among guided pages representing a plurality of related views of a data set. In an example, the data set may include data from a plurality of data domains and further characterized by data having a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions. The at least one of the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains. In an example, the plurality of guided pages may be based on dimensions that may be present in the data set. The method further includes associating the transitions with the view of the data set represented by a source and a destination guided page, and with prior transitions performed by a user of the navigation map. The method further includes determining differences between existing transition information in the navigation map for the source and destination guided pages. The method further includes updating the navigation map based on the determined differences.

The methods and systems relating to dynamically navigating a presentation that includes a set of guided pages of content wherein groups of presentation pages may be linked to other groups of presentation pages through association with a set of core dimensions that may be determined during a data discovery process and that may be common to the presentation pages.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein described herein may be a method including using a processor to access a data set including data from a plurality of data domains and a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions. In an example, at least one of the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains. The method further includes facilitating dynamic navigation within a presentation including groups of presentations pages that may be interlinked. In an example, facilitating dynamic navigation may be performed through user interactions with displayable actionable elements, associated with the industry-specific core dimensions that may be presented by the processor in a plurality of presentation pages on an interactive electronic display. In an example, user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements results in presenting a presentation page in a current group of presentation pages. In an example, user interaction with one of the displayable actionable elements results in presenting a guided page of an alternate group of presentation pages that may be associated with an industry-specific core dimension that may be common to the current and alternate groups of presentation pages.

The methods and systems relating to automatically linking a plurality of presentations that may be organized around a set of common core data dimensions that may be extracted from disparate source data related to operation of a business.

In an aspect of the methods and systems described herein described herein may be a including using a processor to access a data set including data from a plurality of data domains and a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions. In an example, at least one of the plurality of industry-specific core dimensions may be common to at least two of the plurality of data domains. The method further includes automatically linking pages for navigation within a presentation based on associations of the pages with the industry-specific core dimensions, the plurality of data domains, and the at least one core common dimension.

The methods and systems described herein may include automatically linking a plurality of presentations that are organized around a set of common core data dimensions that are extracted from disparate source data related to operation of a business.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF FIGURES

FIG. 1 depicts a functional diagram of guided page navigation.

FIG. 2 depicts an architectural diagram of guided page navigation.

FIG. 3 depicts a flow chart of guided page navigation.

FIG. 4 depicts a functional diagram of navigation among guided pages.

FIG. 5 depicts an architectural diagram of navigation among guided pages.

FIG. 6 depicts a flow chart of navigation among guided pages.

FIG. 7 depicts a block diagram of navigation map based navigation among a plurality of tables.

FIG. 8 depicts a flow chart of navigation map based navigation among a plurality of tables.

FIG. 9 depicts a flow chart of generating a time series object.

FIG. 10 depicts a functional diagram of navigation among a set of documents.

FIG. 11 depicts an architectural diagram of navigation among a set of documents.

FIG. 12 depicts a flow chart of navigation among a set of documents

FIG. 13 depicts a flow chart of synchronizing guided pages between a tablet and a sever.

FIG. 14 depicts a flow chart of column expansion.

FIGS. 15-18 depict guide navigation page features and a guided page navigation engine.

FIGS. 19-25 depict features of tablet based guided page generation, updating, and storage.

FIG. 26 depicts aspects related to a mobility module of a system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation.

FIG. 27 depicts an overview of core technologies described herein.

FIG. 28-34 depict different page types available to the user that are described herein and how they relate to each other.

FIG. 35 depicts exemplary data collection features.

FIG. 36 depicts an exemplary domain editor/data integrator output.

FIG. 37 depicts a domain editor interface.

FIG. 38 depicts a data integrator interface.

FIG. 39 depicts a visual integrator interface.

FIG. 40 depicts flow a data related to modeling described herein.

FIG. 41 depict exemplary application development features.

FIG. 42 depicts an exemplary production flow for updating guided pages.

FIGS. 43-52 depicts various aspects of dynamic presentation path selection.

FIGS. 53-61 depict various presentations of indicators.

FIGS. 62-71 depict various column expansion capabilities and scenarios.

FIGS. 72-77 depict user interface capabilities related to capturing and associating a photograph with data dimensions.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

FIG. 1 depicts domain and data discovery and leaping among a plurality of guided pages 102A, 102B, and 102C. Each guided page 102 may display a data structure containing domain specific data 104 associated with one or more core dimensions 106. The core dimensions 106 may be industry specific. Within a guided page 102 there are one or more display actionable elements 110 and/or points of entry 112. Interacting with a display actionable element 110 in a referring guided page 102A results in the display of a new guided page 102B. The new guided page 102B may display domain specific data 104 common with that of the referring guided page 102A but one or more of the core dimensions 106 may be different from the core dimensions 106 on the referring guided page 102A. Interacting with a point of entry 112 in a referring guided page 102A also results in a new guided page 102C being displayed. The new guided page 102C may show domain specific data 104 associated with a domain which is different from that of the referring guided page 102A. However, at least one of the two industry-specific core dimensions 106 may be in common with the industry-specific core dimensions 106 on the referring guided page 102A.

FIG. 2 represents a data integration and display system for the creation of multi-domain data sets 206 that are used to build guided pages 102. A plurality of data sources 202 are provided to and processed by the integrator 204. The integrator 204 facilitates determining core dimensions 106 from the gathered data. Some of the core dimensions will be industry specific. In addition, the integrator 204 facilitates associating the different domain specific data sets 104 with the identified core dimensions 106 to determine industry-specific core dimensions 106. Of the plurality of core dimensions 106 identified, a portion will be common across two or more domain specific data sets 104. In addition, the integrator 204 may facilitate calculating time-based summaries of the gathered data associated with each industry-specific core dimension 106. The source data and optionally the time-based summaries are organized into a plurality of model-based data repositories 210 that feed the multi-domain data set 206. The multi-domain data set 206, together with a page description and data structure data 212 are used to facilitate creating the guided pages 102.

FIG. 3 depicts a flow chart for a method for guided page navigation. The method may include using a processor to access a data set comprising data from a plurality of data domains and a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions. The method may further facilitate data discovery through user interactions with displayable actionable elements or points of entry. The method may further facilitate navigation among the plurality of guided pages based on guided page high level description information accessible by the processor. The method may conclude with orienting information derived from the data in the data set in an interactive electronic display based on guided page data structure information that is accessible by the processor.

FIG. 4 represents a system for navigation among a set of guided pages 102. Each guided page 102 displays a data structure containing domain specific data 104 associated with one or more core dimensions 106. Within a guided page 102 there are displayed actionable elements 110. When a displayed actionable element 110 is selected the guided page navigation engine 404 identifies a next guided page 102 to display. The next guided page 102 displays a data structure where one or more of the core dimensions 106 is common with that of the referring guided page 102 but the domain of the domain specific data 104 may be different from that of the referring guided page 102. An industry expert develops rules for configuring the guided pages 102 and their inter-relationship based on information that the expert determines to be pertinent to the operation of a particular business activity. The navigation flow between guided pages 102 for different business activities may be impacted by a workflow of a business activity 402 associated with source data used in the guided pages, such as source data 202. The guided page navigation engine 404 uses the workflow of a business activity 402 together with the referring guided page 102 to determine the next guided page 102 to display. In this way direct movement within and between different sets of domain specific data 104 is quickly accomplished.

FIG. 5 represents a data integration and display system for the creation of multi-domain data sets 206 that are used to build guided pages 102. The multi-domain data sets 206 are comprised of data from a plurality of industry specific data models 210, core dimensions 106, and domain specific data sets 104. A plurality of data sources 202 are provided to and processed by the integrator 204. The integrator 204 facilitates determining industry-specific core dimensions 106 from the gathered data. In addition, the integrator 204 facilitates associating the different domain specific data sets 104 with the identified industry-specific core dimensions 106 to determine core dimensions 106 that are common across more than one domain specific data set 104. In addition, the integrator 204 facilitates calculating time-based summaries of the gathered data associated with each industry-specific core dimension 106. The source data 202 and optionally the time-based summaries are organized into a plurality of industry specific model-based data repositories 210 that feed the multi-domain data set 206. The multi-domain data set 206, together with the workflow activity 502 and the page description and data structure data 212 may be used to facilitate creating the guided pages 102.

FIG. 6 depicts a flow chart of a method of navigation among a plurality of guided pages. The method may use a processor to access a data set comprising data from a plurality of data domains derived. The method may further facilitate direct navigation among the plurality of data domains in response to user interactions with displayable actionable elements or points of entry. The method may further facilitate navigation among the plurality of guided pages based on guided page high level description information accessible by the processor. The method may conclude by orienting information derived from the data in the data set in an interactive electronic display based on guided page data structure information that is accessible by the processor.

FIG. 7 shows a portion of the infrastructure supporting guided pages 102, including a plurality of tables 702, a navigation map 706 and a multi-domain data set 206 with common core dimensions 106. The tables 702 are comprised of one or more of core dimensions 106 that are present in the data set 206, data values 704 that correspond to domain data sets 104, and summaries 710. Within a table 702, a subset of the displayed data values 704, as represented by the black squares, are actionable element data values 110. The selection of one of the actionable element data values 110, results in the automatic display of a pre-selected table that includes at least one additional dimension 106 that is related to the selected actionable element data value 110 and data values 704 that are associated with the at least one other dimension 106. An exemplary flow may be seen from Table D 702 showing Dimension Z 106 where the data values 704 correspond to both Dimension X 106 and Dimension Z 106. Upon the selection of an actionable element data value 110 there was a transition to Table E showing Dimension X 106 and the data values 704 are those associated with X, of which a sub set might also be associated with Dimension Z 106. Within a table 702 there may also be points of entry 112 associated with a dimension 106. Selection of a point of entry 112 results in the display of a table that includes at least one of the data values 704 in the referring table and another dimension 104 that is related to the dimension associated with the point of entry 112. This is illustrated in the flow from Table A 702 to Table B 702 or Table C 702. The data values 704 in Table B 702 and Table C 702 correspond to Table A 702. The dimension 106 is either the same as Table A 702 or a dimension 106 related to the dimension 106 of the referring point of entry 112. Also shown in FIG. 7 is the navigation map 706. The navigation map 706 facilitates sequencing to the next table 702, guided page 102, new data values 704 or dimension 106 based on the current table 702, current dimension 106, current guided page 102 and the actionable element 110 or point of entry 112 selected.

FIG. 8 depicts a method flow chart of navigation map based navigation among a plurality of tables. The method may access with a processor a data set comprising a plurality of industry-specific data models derived from a plurality of data sources. The method may further generate with the processor a plurality of guided pages representing a plurality of related views of the data set. The method may further generate with a processor, for inclusion in a portion of the plurality of guided pages, a plurality of tables that comprise the dimensions that are present in the data set. The method may further configure with the processor a plurality of actionable element data values that comprise actionable elements that are selectable by accessing the values. The method may further generate with the processor a plurality of points of entry dimensions that comprise points of entry that are selectable by accessing the dimensions. The method may conclude with referencing with the processor a navigation map to determine which next guided page, table, values, and dimensions to select in response to the selection.

FIG. 9 depicts a method flow chart of generating a time series object. The method may gather data from a plurality of data sources including internal data sources associated with operating a business and external data sources; integrate the gathered data with a script-based integrator; determine core dimensions of the gathered data; associate a portion of the gathered data with core dimensions to identify common core dimensions for the portion of the gathered data; calculate one or more time-based summaries of data associated with each core dimension; and the method may conclude by organizing the time-based summaries into a plurality of distinct model-based data repositories.

FIG. 10 illustrates a system for rapidly accessing documents in a tablet-based user interface where the documents are associated with at least one core dimension 106 or data domain 104. Each guided page 102 displays a data structure containing domain specific data 104 associated with core dimensions 106. The core dimensions 106 may be industry specific. Within a guided page 102 there may be one or more display actionable elements 110 associated with domain specific data 104 and one or more points of entry 112 associated with core dimensions 106. Interacting with a display actionable element 110 results in accessing a document link 1002 that facilitates presenting a document 1004 that is related to the same data domain 104 with which the actionable element 110 is associated. Interacting with one of the displayed points of entry 112 results in accessing a document link 1002 that facilitates presenting a document 1008 that is related to an industry-specific core dimension 106 common with that which the point of entry 112 is associated. The document presented may be any type of document, such as videos, manuals, sell sheets, images of hard copy documents including purchase orders, shipping documents, product images, and the like.

FIG. 11 illustrates a data integration and display system for the creations of multi-domain data sets and associating document links with a appropriate guided page 102. A plurality of data sources 202 are provided to and processed by the integrator 204. The integrator 204 facilitates determining core dimensions 106 from the gathered data. Some of the core dimensions may be industry specific. Of the plurality of core dimensions 106 identified, some portion may be common across two or more domain specific data sets 104. In addition, the integrator 204 facilitates associating the different domain specific data sets 104 with identified core dimensions 106 to determine industry-specific core dimensions 106 that are common across more than one domain specific data set 104. In addition, the integrator 204 facilitates calculating time-based summaries of the gathered data associated with each industry-specific core dimension 106. The source data and optionally the time-based summaries are organized into a plurality of model-based data repositories 210 associated with domain specific data sets 104. The multi-domain data set 206, together with the page description and data structure data 212 facilitate creating the guided pages 102.

FIG. 12 depicts a method flow chart of navigation among a set of documents. The method may use a processor to access a data set comprising data from a plurality of data domains, a plurality of industry-specific core dimensions; facilitate access to documents via a plurality of guided pages in a tablet-based user interface through user interactions with displayable actionable elements or points of entry; facilitate navigation among the plurality of guided pages based on guided page high level description information accessible by the processor; and the method may conclude with orienting information derived from the data in the data set in an interactive electronic display based on guided page data structure information that is accessible by the processor.

FIG. 13 depicts a method flow chart of synchronizing guided pages between a tablet and a server. The method may access with a processor a data set comprising a plurality of industry-specific data models derived from a plurality of data sources used to operate a business including business-internal and external data sources; generate with the processor a plurality of guided pages representing a plurality of related views of the data set, wherein the plurality of guided pages are based on dimensions that are present in the data set; generate with a processor, for inclusion in a portion of the plurality of guided pages, a plurality of tables that comprise the dimensions that are present in the data set; configure with the processor a plurality of actionable element data values that comprise actionable elements that are selectable by accessing the values; generate with the processor a plurality of points of entry dimensions that comprise points of entry that are selectable by accessing the dimensions; the method may conclude by referencing with the processor a navigation map to determine which next guided page, table, values, and dimensions to select in response to the selection.

FIG. 14 depicts a method flow chart of column expansion. The method may generate with a server a plurality of guided pages for operation of a business activity; associate a cache tag with each page of the plurality of guided pages; transmit the generated plurality of guided pages and the associated cache tags to a client device during a first synchronization operation; update a portion of the plurality of guided pages with the server and generating a set of updated cache tags for the updated guided pages; receive cache tags from the client device that indicate the guided pages that are present on the client device; compare the received cache tags with the set of updated cache tags to determine updated guided pages that are not present on the client; and the method may conclude with transmitting transmit the determined updated guided pages and an updated cache tag for each of the determined updated guided pages to the client during a second synchronization operation.

FIG. 15 depicts a table that includes a first column of core dimensions generally as described herein. In the example of FIG. 15, the core dimensions may include brand, account, state, license type, distributor, sales person district, region, chain, supplier sales person, varietal, size, channel, etc. Although this table includes a first column of core dimensions and a first row of summary fields, it may not depict a guided page as described herein because it is intended to show how selecting a cell in a guided page for each dimension listed in the first column (e.g. brand, account, etc.) may result in directing a user to a new guided page, such as to show data for different dimensions related to the selected data. Further in FIG. 15 the column headings may be summary field labels, such as number of cases of current year to date (YTD), number of cases of YTD for last year (LYTD), number of accounts sold in YTD, number of accounts sold in LYTD, new accounts sold in YTD, accounts lost in YTD, total new cases in YTD, total cases lost, sales velocity of YTD, sales velocity of LYTD, case goals of YTD, number of accounts kept for YTD, number of brands sold YTD, number of brands not sold YTD, etc.

Also, it is noted that selecting a cell, a row heading, or a column heading will result in the methods and systems of guided page navigation presenting a new page of data that is related to the item selected. The information depicted in the intersecting cells indicates possible dimensions for presenting in the new page. A page generation engine may generate data for one of these possible dimensions based on contextual and other information. In particular, selecting the cell at the intersection of the “brand” row and the “# of Cases YTD” column may result in presenting a new guided page for an account, state, or distributor dimension. Another example is selecting the cell at the intersection of the “account” row and the “# of Cases YTD” column may result in presenting a new guided page for one of dimensions, brands, or varietals. It is noted that the possible destination dimensions for any given cell in a dimension row may depend on the column heading (e.g. what data is summarized). Therefore, although the possible destination dimensions of the intersection of “brand” and “# of Cases YTD” include account, state, and distributor, the destination dimension of the intersection of “brand” and “# of Accts sold YTD” is account.

FIG. 16 depicts one embodiment of how the selection of a new page as described in FIG. 15 may be determined. A guided page generation engine may include a guided page navigation engine 1602. A guided page 1610 with underlying metadata is depicted for the core dimension “brand” and for three summary columns as shown. The guided page navigation engine 1602 may be operably coupled to a user interface in which the guided page 1610 is presented so as to capture user selections and metadata associated with the guided page 1610. Additionally, the guided page navigation engine 1602 may be configured to receive information about the role of the user, one or more workflows of the user, prior guided page selections (e.g. a history of this and any other guide page user), at least one core data dimension, business rule(s) that may be embodied as a diveplan. The guided page navigation engine 1602 may analyze all available information, including the current guided page, current dimension, current selected element on the guided page, metadata of the page and cell, candidate next domains (e.g. taken from metadata for the current page and/or selected cell), and the like to identify which guided page should be generated or accessed for the user.

The guided page navigation engine 1602 may indicate the next dimension 1608 to be used in the next page and a page generation engine may generate or provide a pointer to a page for the indicated dimension 1608. The page navigation engine 1602 may facilitate filtering of the candidate next dimensions based at least in part on prior actions of the user in the user interface. In the embodiment of FIG. 16, such filtering may result in only one of the three candidate dimensions (account, state, distributor) being selected.

FIG. 17 illustrates selection of a dimension for a next guided page based on input from a user selection in a guided page 1610. In this embodiment, the cell selected by the user (intersection of “brand” and “# of Accounts Sold YTD”) may be defined to only offer one candidate next dimension (accounts). Therefore, the guided page navigation engine 1602 may be able to identify the next guided page dimension without requiring analysis of information such as role, workflow, prior pages, core dimension, and the like. However, this information may be captured and tracked for purposes of adjusting algorithms of a page generation engine.

FIG. 18 illustrates selection or identification of a next guided page 1804 that may be retrieved from a cache of guided pages 1802. The cache of guided pages 1802 may include a large number of reports for a data set. The reports may represent a wide range of possible views of the data set based on dimensions of data that may be present or available in the data set. The reports may have one or more tables 408 that have dimensions that may be calculated or dynamic, and values or summaries that may correspond to those dimensions. In the example of FIG. 18, the table 1808 has a “brand” dimension and various year-to-date summaries. The guided page navigation engine 1602 may use cross-report dimension information (e.g. that may be related to the table 1808) to facilitate determining what is the next guided page 1804 to be pulled from the cache of guided pages 1802.

Learning Techniques for Improving Guided Page Navigation

Existing technologies that facilitate user access to data models may require the user to choose the “right” path so that the next presentation of data is a highly beneficial page of information. In contrast, the inventive methods and systems of guided page navigation present only one screen for each user selection that is likely to be of high relevance to the user. However, the screen that is presented in response to user selection may vary based on context and other factors of the user environment. Therefore, it may be advantageous to use information about a user's actions once a new page is presented to help a guided page navigation learning facility to learn which path is more likely to provide highly beneficial information to a specific user. By applying learning techniques that incorporate user actions, the facility may allow the user to participate in determining the right path among the different paths.

In an unguided interface it is a challenge for the user is to choose the right path for achieving a particular point in a chain of different potential paths because there may be several paths that end up in a particular point, yet some may require several interim steps that may appear to disassociate the end result from the initial objective. In a user interface of guide pages, a guided page navigation facility may present data to the user to allow the user to navigate. In an example of a guided page display of a matrix of data, a user may view the data as having greater significance from a row perspective than from a column perspective and may rely on the row data to determine where to go next. Therefore, if selecting a cell in the matrix (which may be viewed by the navigation facility as an equally weighted intersection of a row and column) presents information that is not driven predominantly by the row data, the user may choose to go back (invoke a “back” function of the interface) to the previous page. By collecting this information across many users and many instances of use by each user, the user actions may help to determine the next navigation steps for the user (e.g. for example, new row, or column, or combination thereof). As noted above, a user action after having navigated to a particular page may be informative of the perceived value of the particular page to the user at a point in the navigation chain.

Each type of user interface (e.g. an unguided interface or a guided interface) may be useful for learning how the user uses data discovery tools and therefore can be used to facilitate system learning for generating high relevance guided page navigation links. Each type of interface may be configured to track user actions and may pass them to one or more servers such that the system may reconfigure or refine guided page navigation based on those interactions. Learning may leverage legacy products that may include a rich history of user actions, such as markers that are created and accessed by the user.

Learning may include automation based on learned data for page generation or click action definition. Information about one or more users' activities in a free navigation product (e.g. for example diveplan/DivePort) may be used to guide the selection of a preferred path in the constrained (e.g. guided) navigation product. This type of technique may support automated identification of navigation among pages across distinct models and data domains.

In an example, if the user creates a marker or report in a legacy product (e.g. the unconstrained product), then the system may determine the parameters and/or data items for which a page may need to be generated. The system may be configured to use the pages generated by business analysts as a guide or a library of pages and may use the navigation of those markers as a guide to click actions or navigation among those pages. In an aspect, the system may be configured to present visualization of a process of clicking on a cell to navigate to a guided page. The inputs used by a page generation engine may be based on industry expertise such as dimensional information of the user, business rules, user intervention to generate a page, and the like.

Navigation Across Distinct Data Domains

In an aspect, a system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation across multiple models or data domains is disclosed. In an aspect, the user may be on a dimension that may relate to more than models. For example, the salesperson appears in the file or the model, which may also appear elsewhere. If the user clicks on sales person, the user may be navigated to a different data source and different model. The system may be configured to allow the user to hop from model to model or data source to data source. Therefore, the system may not be constrained by a mere “drill down” hierarchy within one of the models. The system may be configured to automate navigation within a domain to a degree such as navigate to the other dimensions in that domain and the system may be configured to create those displays within that domain through that automation. This domain information may be used as an input into the page generation engine.

Describing a Guided Page Tablet-Based User Interface

Aspects of methods and systems for converting data from data models as described herein to guide pages for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation is now described. In the inventive methods and systems described herein, a guided page preparation and navigation facility may determine inter-relationships of data (e.g. in the models) so that the facility ensures that users are directed to a highly beneficial guided page each time a user selects a element in a guided page. In this way, the facility leverages these relationships to guide the user to stay within the boundaries of the relationships. Learning from user actions of current and legacy products may contribute to improving the guided page navigation actions.

In an embodiment, core technologies for accessing data models as described herein may be configured to facilitate implementing a guide page navigation environment. The core technologies may be configured to create an array of pages that may be available in a tablet portlet. The pages may be created based on measures portlet that may be configured to define the rows and columns. Core technologies such as a “marker” may be used to define parent dimensions, quick views, and things that the user may want to vary (e.g. dimensions to vary), dimensions as columns, summary and information columns, a diveplan for merging multiple data models, and the like. Markers and similar definitions may act as a specification for generating pages for the portlet. In addition, click actions or menus that may be associated with points of entry in each guided page may define the user navigation from one page to another.

Referring to FIG. 19, the tablet interface may include sections such as a column or tabs of “main menu”, “tablet documents”, and the like. These sections may describe top-level tabs in a DivePort. The sections may include the information about the top-level menu items and may include links to information related to the dimensions. For example, the system may be configured to extract information out of a marker to define measures to generate pages for the tablet portlet. In this way the core technologies can generate a data repository of the summary and information columns that may be stored in the form of a set of java arrays on the disk or java objects. Information columns may include web links, such as links to documents or web pages.

FIG. 20 depicts an example of a tablet matrix of cells that may be presented in a guided navigation page user interface. The first row of the matrix may display an element of the dimension (e.g. region, sales person, product, and customer). The cells below the dimension element in a particular column may represent details of the dimension element. For the region column region details North (N), South (S), East (E), and West (W) are presented. In an example, some summary numbers are provided in the matrix (e.g. for example East: 5 sales people, selling 18 products to 51 customers, and the like). If a user clicks on the number “24” cell, then the user's current position on the matrix will be at “products” and “South”. As this cell represents the product dimension (based on the column header), the next presented guided page will be a “product” page with information about the 24 products. If the number of product is 24, the user may view 24 rows in the next guided page. In an example, when the user clicks on the cell with the value of “24” such as shown in FIG. 20, the user may view a new screen that may be a list of products with information (e.g. time, sales, volume) about each product for the south region such as shown in FIG. 21.

In an aspect, the system may be configured to store a flat file in which each record is self-defining as described elsewhere herein. FIG. 22 depicts an example of a portion of one entry in such a flat file. The file described herein may be configured to consolidate hierarchal or relational database functionality through the flattening process to provide information to the builder. The builder may be configured to use the flat file to create a model. The file may be configured to include information about the region, the salespersons, the products, and the number of customers. In an aspect, the information may be spread across multiple files. Further, the file may be configured to include information, such as “number of cases”, “dollars”, and the like. A single record in such as flat file may preserve complex links among data items. These links may include: the customer may be linked to a salesperson, which in turn may be linked to a region; the customer and product might be linked to an invoice (e.g. some value like dollars); the invoice described herein may contain things like date, dollar, volume, and the like of the product. Such information may be provided from one or more order entry systems, and the like.

FIG. 23 depicts an example of using the diver to facilitate generating the guided pages shown in FIGS. 20 and 21, for example. The model created from the flat file by the builder may be opened in the diver. The diver described herein may be configured to use the model to create a marker. In an example, the user may dive into the region or may define some columns such as for example “add in a dimensional count of sales person”, “add in a dimensional count of product”, “add in dimensional count of customers”, and the like. The result may be a marker which is a text file with attributes, such as: region, define columns, dimensional count of salesperson, dimensional count of product, dimensional count of customers, and the like.

Click actions may be defined in the DivePort to set up guided page navigation paths. A click action may have a type (e.g. for example tablet page) and a destination, which may be a page ID of a unique page. The destination page may also inherit some variables that are passed from the initiating page (e.g. region). In addition, click actions could point to web pages, documents, and other resources, including other tools and products described herein, including legacy general purpose data discovery tools such as DIVER and the like. Such functionality may be enabled through a click action pointing to a back-end server platform. Authentication may also be provided through click actions to facilitate access to secure resources. Click actions could also be parameterized based on aspects of a cell with which the click action is associated (e.g. the cell or row/column heading) such as a core dimension, dynamic dimension, data domain, and the like

In DivePort, the user may create a page such as by using “add page” objects. The user may create a new portlet such as a “measures” portlet. Once the user creates the new portlet, the system may user allow the user to define and open up the marker. The order of operations in setting up successive guided pages that link to each other may include: defining the region page; defining the product detail page; going back to the region page and setting up the click actions. The click actions may include, for example, jumping from a product dimension count in the region page to the product detail page so that when a user selects a product dimension count in a region page he is directed to a product detail page.

While the above describes a user defining each page and the navigation guided paths among the pages, it is envisioned that a software application may be used to automatically generate the guided pages for the user. Such an application may automate the design process for related pages by generating a collection of matrixes (e.g. by region, by sales person, by customers, by products, and the like) and then automatically generating all the possible paths. The learning techniques described herein, as well as industry-expert guidance may be incorporated into generating specific guided page links from all of the possible paths.

Page generation and formation capabilities may be extended to the tablet so that information about rows and columns (e.g. for a column heading of “salesperson” a list of salespersons might be available on the tablet. Through association of one core dimension with a second core dimension, the software capabilities of the tablet may include generating guided pages based on existing guided pages. In an example of tablet page generation, presuming that branch sales data rolls up to a region's sales data, a page of region sales data can be generated by aggregating branch sales data for all branches in a region. In an alternate example, a guided page that contains data for a plurality of dimensions, portions of the page can be extracted to generate a page that is focused on one dimension.

FIG. 24 depicts data flow among several tools and features described herein to facilitate generating guide pages for a guided page interface. An objective of the methods and systems described herein is to generally allow the user to click on an item in a page and view the next page without waiting for long page generation or download times. There may be a feature of the guided page user interface that enables updating the pages. When such a feature is activated for the first time, core technologies may be invoked to generate the pages for upload to the tablet device. Updating may include configuring a saved marker for each page, generating each page and caching the generated pages. Core technology components may include the DivePort for defining pages, DiveLine to support access to markers and the models, and the like. The result may be that the tablet or other user interface device may be configured to get the generated pages as data to be displayed.

In the example of FIG. 24, the tablet may connect to the DivePort, which in turn may connect to the DiveLine (e.g. to bring in the markers and the models). The DiveLine including the markers and the models may be connected to a page generation and caching engine. The page generation engine may be configured to generate and cache data. The cached data may include user-personalized information to present the user specific views on the tablet. The system may be configured to allocate a time stamp and a unique number for each generated page. Using the example of region and product described for FIGS. 15 through 17, one product page per region may be generated (e.g. product_east, product_west, product_south, and product_north). These individual region-specific pages may include amounts calculated on a region-specific basis.

Although the system may take time on the first update (e.g. 10 minutes, 20 minutes, or the like) because the system may open up markers and models to generate the pages, the page generation and caching engine maintains a list of cached pages that can significantly reduce recurring page update times. As new data is processed through updates to the source data (e.g. through a nightly production run), or as changes to the page definitions are made in the backend (e.g. by a systems analyst) because the system is configured to cache the pages, it is possible to determine which pages need to be generated based on the update and to generate these new pages even before the pages need to be uploaded to the tablet device. Further, the system may be configured to retrieve pre-calculated information and deliver updates to the tablet. In an aspect, the system may be configured to regenerate the pages in anticipation of the tablet connecting up again based on the data present on the system. The tablet may just need to download the pages and select among the pages based on the user requirement.

A collection of pages that may differ by one or more parameters (e.g. quickview variable) is indicated by the dotted lines in FIG. 24. In an example, if the product is based on region and sub-region or region and salesperson, then the system may be configured to generate pages by iterating through the combinations of the region and sales person. Therefore, such iterating may result in an exponential number of pages being generated. Consequently, some computation may occur at the user interface device (e.g. tablet) to select the pages, such as through filters or navigation. The tablet may use a select and pass technique (e.g. to send along “region” as the quickview parameter to define the marker such that the system may deliver the pages) for selecting a page for display from based on the quickview variable.

The page generation and caching engine may facilitate generation of a large number of pages in advance of any need for the pages. However, to improve responsiveness, the page generation and caching engine may execute a proprietary ETL language that allows for “last minute” ETL processing that is nonetheless extremely fast in generating a required page or set of pages. One example is in the generation of tabs, cross-tabs, multi-tabs and the like. These are quite complex and could involve a large number of pages. One solution is to embed the ETL for generating cross-tabs, multi-tabs and the like into the page generation and caching engine. As a result only common inherited variables need be processed ahead of time, thereby reducing the workload needed for complex solutions.

Although it is depicted in FIG. 24 that markers and models appear to be connected to the page generation engine directly, it is as likely that markers and models may go through DiveLine, DivePort, and the like to reach the page generation and caching engine.

FIG. 25 shows an example of guided page storage for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The data storage on a tablet, server, laptop, and the like of guided pages and parameters may facilitate rapid and reliable access to guided pages.

The guided page storage may be configured to include a directory structure and a data directory. A directory for data may be included in the data directory for each page. In addition, information for sections menus (e.g. tabs.info or sections.info) is stored for ready access. Each page may be configured to include page information (e.g. high level description of the page) and page data structure (quickview values, selections array such as the page data array with things like: East=1; south=2 such that the system may find the right page within the data pages). The system may be configured to include the cache information and other page information such as data pages 0.data (data for a page that you would see for that selection), 1.data, 2.data, and the like as shown in FIG. 24.

The cache information described herein may be useful for determining the pages that need to be updated such as when the guided pages are updated or when the tablet is connected to the Internet. Each page may be associated with a cache token that may be exchanged between a user interface device (e.g. a table) and a server to keep track of the pages on the tablet or other user interface device. The tokens may then be accessed when new data has been produced into the data models to determine which pages are impacted. Alternatively, a timestamp may be generated for each page so that pages generated before a particular update may be identified for being updated. In either case, a unique number may be created and associated with a particular view of the data to facilitate managing cached data to ensure accuracy, timely updates, and the like. Cache tokens may be attached to presentations, images, data tables, files, documents, and configuration information and other objects handled by the methods and systems disclosed herein. During a synchronize operation, the client and the server can send each other cache tokens to describe what data is available on each side. If the client is missing certain data that it or the server decides it needs to have, the server may send the client the data and the cache token that identifies it. The cache tokens can be used to identify stale information that needs to be updated during a synchronize operation. The cache tokens can also be used to identify fresh information that needs to be transferred during a synchronize operation, such as, for example, information entered by a user on a client device, photos or videos taken by a client device, or the like.

The system may include the ability to synchronize data on the server with data on the client. This allows data to be stored locally, and available even when the client is not connected on the network. By storing it locally, the data can be displayed quickly.

Guided Page Navigation

As described herein, a system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation among and between dimensions and domains of data for operating the business may be used to facilitate gathering data from various sources. The source data ingestion or data collection may include data from customer data sources and external data sources. The customer data sources may include flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouse, SQL databases, variously formatted or sourced data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The external sources may include third party feeds, market or demo data. Data collection and ingestion are described elsewhere herein at least in regards to FIG. 35.

In addition, the system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may facilitate data integration using various tools and facilities of the system including a domain editor. Integrator scripts may enable the data integration that is part associated with the domain editor. A visual data integrator tool that may facilitate designing data integrator scripts. The integrator scripts may include various business rules, calculations, filtering, and the like that may be applied to the data. The output may be a de-normalized dataset that may be described as comprising a set of single records that are self-defining. The domain editor tool set may facilitate discovering data in the sources (e.g. in an SQL database). The domain editor may also facilitate extracting data from SQL and other databases, among other things.

An industry expert may typically explore source data associated with operating a business with the use of the domain editor to figure out what information may be available and tag or define the data during one or more exploration steps. This may involve defining data types/fields (e.g. “core data dimensions”), which may be the most important types of data for operating the business. An industry expert may ask questions about operating a business to help determine the core data dimensions. As noted above, the domain editor may include a visual data integrator tool for designing scripts for the data integrator.

The domain editor data integrator script engine uses a novel script based language. The script-based data integrator is configured to generate denormalized data sets that results in highly efficient “joining” of data from various types such as supplier data, product related data, sales person related data, and the like. The result is also accomplished at a much faster rate with the use of the data integrator than may be done with or in a relational database (RDB).

As large source data sets may be required to be processed quite frequently (e.g. nightly production runs) to have updated data available for users daily, the time and computing power required to process the data may require careful planning and management. One way that this may be done is that an industry-expert may provide guidance to the tools of such a production system. The expert may create business rules that can be used during the nightly production model update process to seek to achieve a balance between pre-calculated summaries (that may require computation during production) and raw data generation (that may require processing in near-real time in response to user selections).

The expert may need to tradeoff computing data during the production run versus having to compute data in near real-time when the user selects a data element which produces a new guided page of data. Also of important consideration, if production is not complete in the time allotted for a given production run, then the data from that production run may not be available to be used the next day. In addition, if production is adjusted so that it leaves much of the most popular data in non-summarized form, a tablet user interface may operate too slowly. Therefore, a tradeoff between computation during the production run and computation needed in real-time may be required so as to maintain an equitable balance. In general, source data may be organized into dimensions, summary fields, information fields, and the like.

Dimensions of Data

The dimensions of data associated with the data models described herein may be classified into core dimensions and dynamic dimensions. The number of core dimensions may be limited to 32 because as the number of core dimension increases, the processing time that may be required for data discovery may increase exponentially. This is due to a process that involves calculating summaries of all relevant data from all other core dimensions for each core dimension.

In some cases, large databases may be limited to 12 or fewer core dimensions to ensure that data will be completely processed in a predefined time period or a specific time period such as overnight. For example, the processing of the data may be complete between 1 AM to 6 AM, thereby enabling users to get updated data in the morning.

The dynamic dimensions may be significant because they may not increase production processing time while allowing for views of data from a dimension perspective in a way that may be similar to how data for core dimensions may be viewed. In some cases, the dynamic dimensions may be viewed by requiring some additional processing at the front end when the user wants to view the data.

Another type of dimension is a central dimension. A central dimension does not directly relate to the organization of data for data modeling as described above. Rather, a central dimension is a user-centric concept that descriptively represents a higher level or ‘gathering’ of data into an organization that is familiar to a user. Generally the term “central dimension” or “central data dimension” used herein refers to a logical grouping of data, such as a plurality of core dimensions, that can be represented to a user as a dimension around which other dimension and data domains can be clustered. This may be presented to the user as a high-level tab or high-level entry in a hierarchy, although other such representations are possible. Therefore, a central dimension may be a core dimension; however a central dimension may represent a logical grouping of more than one core dimension. Also, a central dimension may indicate a logical grouping of data that represents a subset of data associated with a core dimension.

Summary Fields

Also of important consideration are the summary fields that may be tagged as fields that may be summarized or fields that may include data that may be put into a summarized format for rapid access during guided page generation.

Information Fields

Information fields are also important considerations at least because data in information fields may be non-summarizable. Information field examples include customer attributes, such as customer phone number/information, category, region, and other similar information related to a customer.

The system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may facilitate using various tools and facilities of the system to identify and organize source data into distinct data domains. The organization of data into these distinct data domains may be a part of the model building process that may result in distinct data models for each distinct data domain. In particular, a separate data model may be built by for each distinct data domain. Therefore, there may be more than one model, which may help improve access speed within and across the data domains.

The system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may facilitate creating and applying business rules to the models. Tools such as diver, ProDiver, and the like to access or view the data domain models may use the business rules. Access to the distinct data domains may be further guided by system capabilities including markers, diveplans, and the like. Dive plans may be used to save a business-rules-based view of the models and in general have been described elsewhere herein at least in regards to FIG. 41. A marker may be used to attach rules to the data and to save intermediate results and has been described elsewhere herein with reference to FIGS. 27, 40, and 41.

The system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may include a tablet application (app). The system may include DivePort functionality described herein at least with reference to FIG. 41 to help with the delivery of distinct domain data from the data models to a tablet page generation subsystem. In particular a tablet page generation subsystem may include or connect with a page generation engine may be used to generate/adjust pages suitable for tablet or other touch-screen device presentation. In addition to page generation, a page generation subsystem may consider and factor in location of data for generation of the pages, such as tablet storage versus server storage of data Has the data for generation of the tablet-compatible page been cached (e.g. in the tablet device) to allow off-line page generation and navigation?

Navigation within and among the distinct data domains may be impacted by industry expert knowledge, such as in the form of various configurations of the system including dimensions, summary fields, page points of entry, pathways to areas of interest from those points of entry, selection of data types to be presented in guided pages, and the like.

The system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may include solutions for various industries including, without exception: healthcare-specific apps for various roles in healthcare for example nurse data, intake data, ER tech, and the like; winery-specific apps for suppliers, distributors, retailers, and the like; distribution-specific apps for products such as liquor, wine, automotive parts, financial services, or any other product or service.

The system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may provide benefits through tablet-based dashboards that may facilitate visibility into key business processes thereby replacing “gut-feel” decisions with “fact-based” decisions that can be based on ‘one version of the truth’ rather than on each user's own spreadsheet view. Additionally it may facilitate greater timeliness and accuracy in aligning business activity with company goals/strategy.

A system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may further provide the benefit of navigating through distinct data domains that are clustered around and across central dimensions in a way that may give the sense of being intuitive to a user. The user may perceive the possession of an ability to ‘freely’ navigate about the data, even though each selectable cell or row or column heading may lead the user to another contextually relevant guided page.

In addition to accessing data and summaries, the methods and systems described herein may also provide access to documentation, videos, manuals, sell sheets, images of hard copy documents including purchase orders, shipping documents, images of product, and the like using similar guided navigation techniques. Therefore, access to documentation may be handled logically in a very similar way to assess to the data described herein. In an example, the documentation may be linked document by document to the data, and in particular to the core data dimensions so that each document may be accessed in a proper business context.

For example, if a user reviews sales figures for a specific brand of product such as a wine, the user may have access to invoices for the sales of that wine. The user may also have access to images of the wine bottle label, a marketing sheet provided by the wine maker, and the like. In this context, the user may not likely have direct access to the invoices for product variants such as scotch or other different products because these documents would not be contextually relevant to the sales figures of the specific brand of the wine. Therefore, the system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may be used by an organization where document access requirements may be different for different personnel depending upon role business objective, project, requirement, and the like. The system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may be configured so that a single application may be able to cater to different access needs of different users. Access of different users may be limited by a user's authentication level.

The system described herein may include a complete document management system that may be organized in a variety of ways. In addition, the complete document management system may be organized by industry for example wine industry, liquor industry, automotive parts industry, healthcare industry, and the like. The complete document management system may be organized by activities or roles of a specific user for example, sales, support, planning, regulatory activities, and the like. The complete document management system may be organized based on company specific requirements for example, business plans, goals, procedures, contacts, invoices. For example, the requirements may user is interest at selecting bill data, orders or user

Sum- Sum- Sum- Sum- Sum- Dimension mary 1 mary 2 mary 3 mary 4 mary 5 Dim Val Summary 1 (domain 1) of domain 1 Domain 2 Summary 2 of domain 2 interest in order data, product images or labels or user interest in selecting product data. The complete document management system may be organized based on product placement such as store images, signage, floor plan and the like.

The system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may be configured so that the system may link up access permissions to other contextually relevant data and automatically grant access to the data. The contextual relevancy may be different based on industry requirements and may be configured by an expert or contextual relevancy using markers, diveplans, and the like.

In an example where the tablet based version of the system is used, a user interface may be included through which the user may select any element in a matrix (including a row or heading column) and the next screen may appear as a particular destination that will include a view of data that is related to the selected element. Such an example is described below.

A user may choose a dimension to present in a left column (row headings) and the user may have an option to switch the choice to a different dimension. Each dimension value (in the left column) may be selected to view details of that dimension (e.g. selecting a “sales person” dimension may present a list of sales persons in a “sales person” column). Column headers may represent summary fields, time ranges, and the like as described above. The values in each cell may represent a summary of the selected data (e.g. sales) for each entry (dimension value) shown in the left hand column (row headers). The cells in the example below may be filled with summary data values.

Domain 3 Summary 1 of domain 3

The tablet solution may allow selection of a cell value which points to a data structure that defines the next table of data to display. This next table may be related to the row/column heading of the selected cell and may be filtered thereby to present the subset of the type of page. The industry expertise/knowledge/guidance as stated above may be applied in determining summaries to be present along the column headings and new summaries to be present when a cell is selected, thereby circumventing a need for presenting menus or a selection of destinations when a value is selected. The industry expertise may be used to generate the summaries and to determine the summaries and new dimensions to be presented in the next page view.

In a further example, an executive may want to start his day with “news” about details of a business. The news may include a new product, new presentation, or the like information. The executive may want to view and download these new items. The executive may want to look at data (e.g. in a tabular view) to navigate among a set of guided pages that provide key high-level summary data. The executive may want to get a list of things to do (the list maybe driven by the data), or people to see (again driven by the data). The executive may want to be able to enter new information (e.g. a contact note). This function may be carried out by a single tablet-based application of the system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation.

Workflow may be an important aspect of the information that is displayed to the user in each successive screen. As may be noted in the executive example above, the executive's workflow at the start of a day may involve several non-data items that are mostly driven off of the data. For example, if the executive views sales data is considered and it shows an unexpectedly sharp change, the executive may want to schedule a conference with the director in charge of the unit that experienced the change. If the summary data indicates that the quarterly sales goals may be exceeded, the executive may want to discuss sales goals for the next quarter. Similarly, various other scenarios may be possible.

Therefore, although guided page navigation may be keying off of the technology and the expertise off of the industry, such navigation may also need to incorporate and key off of the workflow. For example, it may consider what the users may need to do in order to carry out their daily activities and may combine the results in a set of guided pages.

The system and methods described herein for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may be useful in a variety of applications including product management or operations, or distribution or retailing such as for example winery management, hospital operations, wine or liquor distributor, retail store, monitoring sales progress or for promotional activities, presentations and the like.

Exemplary markets or environment may include wineries, healthcare, liquor distribution, automotive parts, financial services, and the like. Some of the exemplary deployment scenarios in various exemplary environments are presented below.

In an exemplary scenario, sales representatives may visit to a retail store. The system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may be used by the sales representatives for monitoring sales progress or for promotional activities, and the like in a retail store. For example, the sales representatives may track down available inventory at a customer request for a particular commodity or may fetch discount or promotional offer data for customers using the application.

In an exemplary scenario, suppliers may analyze sales data. The system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may be used by the suppliers or sales experts of an organization for tracking and monitoring sales data. This may be useful in checking company progress and may serve as an indicator that may be used in sales forecasting, inventory management, production forecasting and the like activities. The tablet may be configured to be linked to company forecasting data that may get updated on its own based on data fed into the system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation.

An exemplary scenario may include operating a professional services business. In such cases, the system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may be used by such as law firms, consulting firms for project management, sales activity, team work sharing, and the like.

In an example, a data analyst may use the system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation in extracting reports, uploading results and may fetch related data contextually relevant to a single record thereby increasing efficiency and reducing time required for analysis.

FIG. 31 depict aspects related to mobility module of the system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The system may be configured to allow the user to access the model data from anywhere (e.g. via the diver). A native tablet-type device application may be used to allow the user such access from anywhere by including some data (e.g. a canister model) on the tablet device. In an example, the mobility module may leverage core diver infrastructure to access the system from anywhere. The system may allow off-line (disconnected) use to the user. For example, the user may access the data off-line without getting connected to the network. The mobility module may allow access to the critical Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from anywhere or anytime. A DivePort facility may facilitate easy design of the mobile views and then publish views for mobile devices such as smart phone, tablets, and the like.

In an example, NetDiver module of a system may be used to facilitate data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The NetDiver module may provide browser-based zero-footprint ad hoc analytics interface. The NetDiver module described herein is provided for general and advanced users. The NetDiver module may be configured to allow access and analyze data via the Web. The NetDiver module may reside on a Web app server and may act as a bridge between user's web browser and DI models. The NetDiver module enables a user to dive, focus, summarize, create calculators, save work, and the like.

Further to an example depicted in FIG. 31, budget, planning, and forecasting module of the system may be provided for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The budget, planning, and forecasting module may include head planner leads, collaborative effort aggregating user's own slices of the data. The budget, planning, and forecasting module may include flexible toolkit approach such as to expect a custom planning development cycle to meet business process requests. The budget, planning, and forecasting module may include an integrated solution that sources final plan through diver while using DiveLine for access control and role-based security. The budget, planning, and forecasting module may include planner uses of a component interface (e.g. Console, Toolbar) to edit the administration capabilities.

In an example, a cell diver module of the system may be provided for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The cell diver module may act such as an add-in to an MS Excel® file. The cell diver module may allow diving from MS Excel® based console. The cell diver module may pull data directly from DiveLine into an Excel file. The cell diver module may allow opening models, markers, DivePlans, Tunnel files, and the like. The cell diver module may allow to dive further into data and apply MS Excel® based functions.

The ProDiver or diver module of the system may facilitate data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation.

In an example, various aspects related to technology components such as DivePort of the system may facilitate data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation.

In an example, dashboards module of the system may be provided for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation.

In an example, a scorecard module of the system may be provided for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation.

In an example, an indicator module of the system may be provided for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation.

In an example, a compound indicator module of the system may be provided for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation.

In an example, a measure module of the system may be provided for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation.

In an example, maps module of the system may be provided for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation.

In an example, a production module of the system may be provided for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation.

Overview Figure

FIG. 27 describes structural components of a system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The components presented in FIG. 27 may provide functionality related to data ingestion, integration, summarization, analysis, access, and user level presentation. These components may be described herein and may include Builder, Diver, Marker, Data Integrator, DiveLine, ProDiver, WebDiver, Report Diver, Model Splitter (Personalized Models), Detail Builder (Detail Row Access), DI-Broadcast and Analyst (Delivery Automation), Dimensional Insight Access Language (DIAL), Diveport, htmlDiver, Tunnel such as to access back to a data warehouse, Page Generation Engine, Canister Models, and the like.

Page Types that Support Information Leaping

Page types that may facilitate information leaping in presentation type environments may include access pages, central pages, overview page, list pages, and others. Page types are depicted in FIGS. 28 through 34. FIG. 28 depicts different page types. FIG. 29 depicts different page types that facilitate leaping and how they relate to each other. FIGS. 30-33 depict examples of different page types for various industries. FIG. 34 depicts a central page for a “State” dimension.

Access pages may alternatively be referred to as “entry” pages that may be the first page or first few pages to be displayed in response to a user selecting a menu item. While access pages may include selectable data items (for guided page navigation) access through the selectable data items may be done via a “central page” that is described herein after. Access pages may provide basic viewing capabilities including sorting, and the like. Each menu item may be linked to an access page and additional access pages may be linked through selectable items on an access page. Each central dimension of the dataset that is being explored through the information leaping capabilities described herein may be accessed via one or more access pages. Access pages may facilitate access to other page types such as central pages, list pages, and overview pages. In an example, an access page may provide direct access to a central page type and/or to an overview page type and indirect access to a list page type as depicted in FIG. 29.

A second page type is a central page that may be associated with a central dimension as described herein. Generally a central page is accessed through an access page when a central dimension is selected on the access page. In a dataset about U.S. states, the data item “state” would be a central dimension. Therefore, clicking on a state name (e.g. Georgia) or the like in an access page may leap to a central page based on the state central dimension value Georgia. Within the Georgia central page attributes about the item may be displayed (number of hospitals, demographics, health care data, infant mortality, education, etc.). By selecting attribute item, such as hospitals on the Georgia central page, a new central page for the central dimension Hospitals might be presented. An exemplary central page is depicted in FIG. 30. Central pages may facilitate access to other page types, such as access, list, and overview page types. In an example depicted in FIG. 29, a central page may provide direct access to access type pages and list type pages while providing indirect access to overview type pages.

A third page type is a list page that may show details of a selected item. In an example, selecting a count of hospitals in the Georgia central page might leap to information about hospitals and may result in a list of all of the hospitals in the state of Georgia. List pages may provide access to other pages, such as access, central and overview page types. In an example depicted in FIG. 29, a list page may provide direct access to central and overview page types while providing indirect access to access type pages.

A fourth page type is an overview page that may be used to combine top-level information from different business areas to provide an overview and entry to other business information. An overview page may be accessed from a main menu. An overview type page may facilitate access to other page types, such as access type pages, list type pages, and central type pages. In an example depicted in FIG. 29, an overview page type may provide direct access to a list page type and an access page time while providing indirect access to a central page type.

An Example of Information Leaping

In an example of information leaping, a list page of states and hospitals per state might be displayed. Selecting a count of hospitals in a specific state (e.g. select 95 next to Alabama) may display the 95 hospital names along with various data items for each hospital. One such various data item might be in the category of gross patient revenue. Selecting this item might provide sort options for the entries in this item (sort the list of hospital names by gross patient revenue). The result is an ordered list of the 95 hospital names and other data (e.g. location) based on gross patient revenue. Selecting a location (e.g. city name) from this list may result in an information leap from hospital specific data to location specific data. This changed data domain may show a count of clinical services available in the selected location. By selecting this count, a listing of the clinical services may be presented along with a count of hospitals that offer each clinical service. The methods and systems described herein that enable information leaping may facilitate such leaping from state to hospital to location to clinical services, and the like with a minimum of selections.

Data Sources

FIG. 35 depicts aspects related to data collection and a data collection module of a system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. Data collection may include data sources such as for example, but not limited to, legacy systems, ERP systems, spreadsheets, data warehouses, suppliers, distributors, government such as local, state, federal, and the like such as shown in FIG. 35. Data collection may further consider and support various types of information such as product information, state laws and regulations, federal laws and regulations, local laws and regulations, customer information, purchase history, news, industry guidelines, business plans, customer information such as name, address, city, zip, consumes liquor on or off premises, purchase history, and the like.

The data sources may further include product information. The product information may be obtained from any of the data sources, such as a supplier or distributor product database that may include the information about a distributor of a product. Suppliers constantly develop new product and distributors constantly update their supply of products. Therefore, the product information may be obtained from one or more feeds of a supplier (e.g. creator of the product), distributor, or the like. The product information may for example include UPC codes, PAN number of the supplier, alcohol content, color, sell sheets, videos, marketing materials, and the like. Therefore, solutions described herein for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may address diverse and detailed product information.

The sales chain of liquor and wine is complex primarily due to complying with regulations for distribution of liquor, beer, and wine. For example, a winery or distillery typically sells to a supplier who may aggregate products from a wide range of small wineries. The supplier primarily sells to a distributor, who sells to a retailer who further sells to a retail consumer. Solutions for data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may include this tiered system. Therefore, solutions for data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation for suppliers may focus on different data (different dimensions of the data) than solutions for distributors, retailers, and the like.

The data sources may further include supplier information. For example, the winery or distillery may be a supplier or can use a second part supplier to sell its products. Using the example above such a supplier sells to a distributor; the distributor sells to a retailer; the retailer sells to a customer who may be a restaurant (on-site) or a consumer (take home). Therefore, the supplier information or data described herein may include data from the winery and/or from the second part supplier. As noted above, this information may include product attributes (such as for example alcohol content of each product, color, and the like). However, it may also include sell sheets (marketable, positioning of the products, videos, differentiators from other products or competitors, displays, incentive items, and the like) and the like. The supplier information may further include vintage, beer shelf life, and the like. The supplier information described herein may further include cost of the product (such as deals volume based business, tiered pricing, and the like). For example, if a product or set of products is lagging in sales, a supplier may provide compensation to the distributor for each product that is distributed over a period of time. The supplier information may further include discount participation for sale to the customers that may be volume based (from the customer's perspective) or may be based on a pure discount level. The supplier information may further include product sales history, supplier sales history, and the like. In an example, industry consolidation results in distributors or suppliers merging or otherwise changing in a variety of ways including changing distributors. Such changes may impact a customer of a supplier or distributor so the supplier may provide information that helps the customer in gauging the business for a new supplier to set expectations. In some situations, sales may be tracked and provided as sales history for a new supplier. The suppliers may target or fix goals across most of the products for sales over a time frame (goals or quotas) that may be distributed down to the sales person level. Therefore, solutions for data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may support functionality such as to identify if a sales person meets these quotas or goals.

Further, the supplier information may include wholesale price or cost information for the product (such as recommended prices, tiered pricing, and the like). The suppliers may tend to offer financial support such as to generate higher sales. Such support may come in the way of sales support, financial incentives (e.g. give a distributor 50 cents per case cash in a bank for each case that are sold) and the like. A solution for data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation for suppliers may focus on financial support return on investment that is meant to generate higher sales. In an aspect, there may be a notion of discount participation that impacts pricing that a supplier can expect to charge. For example, if a customer buys ten products, then the customer may have to pay a price P1 per product, while if the customer buys 100 such products, then the cost may be discounted and the customer may for example have to pay P2 per product, which is almost assuredly less than price P1. Similarly, for even higher volume purchases, the customer may get an even steeper discount. In an aspect, there may also be another notion of receiving some financial support based on the level of discount. For example if a customer sells at discount level X, the customer may receive an incentive, and if the customer sells at discount level 2X, then the customer may receive greater incentive. In an aspect, the solution for data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation for the supplier may focus on a discount participation dimension of the data.

The data sources may further include sales person information. The solutions for data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation for a sales person may focus or depend on the nature and type of customers associated with a specific sales person. For example, the sales person of a supplier may sell to distributors or directly to end buyers (e.g. wine collectors, large retailers, and the like). The sales person of a distributor may sell to retailers (e.g., restaurants, hotel chains, package stores, grocery stores, and the like). The sales person of a retailer may sell to consumers or entities such as businesses, individuals, and the like. In this aspect, the term “customer” described herein, may have different meanings for a supplier, a distributor, a retailer, and the like. The distributor or supplier may have its own database of files that may control the salesperson team structure. The solutions for data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation for any portion of the wine and liquor sales chain (supplier, distributor, retailer, and the like) may focus on being able to look at any level of hierarchy and dive down all the way to an individual salesperson.

Sales person data may be characterized by at least two data elements such as customer and product type (e.g. wine or liquor). Sales person data may also be tied to the customer and/or the sales person. For example, each customer may be assigned at least two salespersons (such as for example wine sales person and liquor sales person). Alternatively, a distributor may have a dedicated sales force selling a particular supplier's products. This may happen when the suppliers are quite large. The result may be that a customer may be associated with both a dedicated sales team and one or two other sales persons for other products all from the same distributor. For example, there may be a regular wine salesperson and a special supplier wine salesperson such that the customer may be associated with regular liquor salesperson, regular wine salesperson, and regular supplier salesperson. Therefore, solutions for data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may include support for complex salesperson-customer arrangements.

The data sources may further include distributor data, which may be similar to a supplier data (such as for example, the distributors may have their own salesperson that may be selling to the retailers, and the like). In addition, the distributor may also deal with an inventory that the distributor may need to manage (such as product mix, inventory, stock management, lead time for ordering, future sales plans, and the like). Therefore, solutions for data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation for the distributors may therefore be focused on inventory management considerations.

As noted above, pricing may be a bit complex for distributors due to customer pricing matrix requirements. In an example, a customer pays a defined price P0 for a product when purchased in a particular quantity, and another customer may pay price P2 for the same product at the same quantity. Likewise, a customer's store in state S1 may purchase product at a different price than that same customer's store in state S2 due to a variety of factors, such as state-by-state distribution cost differences, state imposed minimum purchase fees, and the like). The solutions for data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation for the distributors may focus on managing the customer pricing matrix considerations. One such consideration is to comply with state regulations, a sale by a supplier to an end consumer may need to be transacted through a distributor (as if the distributor were buying the product from the supplier and then selling it to the end consumer) even though the product merely gets received and then forwarded by the distributor. Alternatively, a distributor may buy the product from the supplier, and the product may be shipped to a warehouse, held there, and then sold in a separate transaction or transactions.

In an aspect, the data sources may also include retail customer data and consumer data. The access to the data sources described herein may be by using an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) database and the like. A non-standard file may be accessed by using an FTP server (such as FTP data source). The database may include flat files or text, MS Excel® files or MS Access® files and the like.

FIG. 36 shows an example of a domain editor or a data integrator of the system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation output. The figure describes a sample input data that may be used as an input to a builder program. The input to the builder program may be modeled as a set of flat files. Each flat file 50, 52 may consist of a number of records 48, each of which may describe a single entity. The records 48 may be divided up into different fields 48, which may represent different attributes of the entity. Multiple files may be related by using a common field such as to perform a standard relational database join operation to produce a single logical file, with one record for each entity.

The system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may be used to describe the fields in the input files, and assign a type to each of the fields. The data dictionary may contain three pieces of information about each field: a field name 40, a field type 42, and an associated dimension 44. The field name 40 may be used to identify the information contained in the field. The field type 42 may identify the field as either a dimension, a summary field, or a non-summary field. The dimension field may be a search key along which the data that may be organized and summarized. The summary field may be a numeric quantity that provides useful information when summed and averaged. The non-summary field may contain information that may be associated with each input record, or with a value of the dimension field. The non-summary field may be a field that may not be important enough to be a dimension field, or a field that may directly be related to an existing dimension field. The associated dimension 44 may be used for non-summary fields to identify the dimension field that the information is associated with or “Detail” if the non-summary information is unique for each input record.

The example in FIG. 36 illustrates a personnel database, where each record 48 in an employee file 50 represents an employee of a company. The input files may consist of the employee file 50, which may contain data about each employee, and the department file 52, which may contain information about the different departments. The department file 52 may be joined to the employee file 50 using a common department Identifier (ID) field. The data dictionary may describe various fields of the input files, and may identify the fields as dimension fields, summary fields, and non-summary fields. The department name and manager fields may be non-summary fields associated with a Dept. ID dimension field. The address and name fields may be non-summary fields associated with each input record. Alternatively, the address and name fields may be associated with the employee ID dimension field, since the employee ID field is unique for each record.

There may be several challenges associated with database management, and record keeping. For example, in an aspect, item number for the same product may be different in different states such as in Florida versus in Missouri. In an aspect, it may be required to summarize products together because total sales of a particular brand such as “Johnny Walker Red” may be required to be determined in a business. Therefore, it may be required to denormalize the data. The single denormalized data record for different product numbers, descriptions may be created such as e.g. the record may hold a “Florida item number” field and a “Missouri item number field.” A cross-reference table may be provided that may act as a link to pull in the data. The link may exist in the lowest level record, which links to a cross-reference table in the data source. For example, if the lowest level is invoice line item level for a product P, then product information about the item P such as suppliers, cost, size, taste, packages per case, cases per pack, and the like, customer information about the sale such as state, county, tax, link to regulations, license, and the like, sales related information for a sale such as salesman information, and the like, or any other representation of the line item such as for the same product that can have different item numbers in different states may be retrieved. Alternatively, a cross-reference table may be linked such as to allow aggregated reporting across states that may include different data for the same field. This link may be in the lowest level record. The cross reference may be made to a non-data content item such as an image of a distributor's license tied to the license and the like.

FIG. 37 describes a domain editor such as to discover data and establish domains of data. The domain editor described herein may be configured to facilitate data discovery and further facilitate ingestion, integration of data, and the like. The domain editor may be used to convert data from various data sources or types into a format and content that may be used by the model-building engine. In an aspect, an expert may configure the domain editor to create a single record for each relevant item. A dataset may be created to facilitate the ingestion of data from a range of disparate sources to generate models that may facilitate fast, guided page generation and dimension-specific data discovery. The dataset described herein may include at the lowest level a single record that completely defines itself for example, an invoice line item level in a sales or distribution industry. The line item in the invoice may define the item, its price, quantity, and the like. The dataset may have enough information in a single record so that all products related information (bottles, pack, price, product, case, and the like), the customer information (such as for example name, city, state, zip, on or off premise, and the like), salesperson information for that sale, and the like can be pulled. The lowest level of detail may be denormalized data stored in one record. In contrast, a normalized database data may have a star schema with tables for each different type of information (such as for example one for product, one for customer, and the like) connected to each other with database joins.

In an aspect, the domain editor may be configured to generate data in a format and organization that may facilitate a variant of data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation based on models generated from domain editor data output. It is important to guide data discovery on a daily basis such as to know the performance. The important aspects of a business may be product (relationship to the products), customer (relationships to the customers), and the like. The data discovery phase may enable these aspects such as to provide guided page navigation. In an aspect, the information that is not important at a particular time period may be important later for the business. In an aspect, various industry experts may participate and know what to prompt the customer. For example, varying shelf life versus beneficial aging is unique to the wine/beer business. The unique distribution rules (such as exclusive versus non-exclusive that may be allowed to handle something or to handle different customer licensing from state to state, such as determining customers' preferences towards products, ways and methods of purchases by customers, dry counties within a state, restricted licenses within a state, county, town, or the like). The rules may take care of and consider several aspects such as government reporting (such as imports), process for bonded product and pulling it out of bond. For example, every state may have different ways of reporting wine and liquor sales. The customer part of the lowest level record may have a license number in a state or county location and there may be a link to a regulatory requirement in a business.

An industry expert may ask or prompt a client about customer aspects that may be important about the customer, product aspects that may be important about the product, and the like. A user of the methods and systems for operation of a business through data discovery via guided page navigation may be required to take on license for a product that is different from state to state. This may reflect highly regulated supply chain requirements that may be encoded into and/or impact customer preferences related to which product to buy in which state and through which channel, region (e.g. dry county, limits, food sales related), and the like. The rules may take care of and consider several aspects such as government reporting (such as imports), process for bonded product and pulling it out of bond. Other aspects such as time frame or measures (day, week, month, summarizing data, and detailed data) under consideration, and ways of comparing data (Year-to-Date (YTD), month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter) may also be considered.

In an aspect, the domain editor may be configured to determine the time based on the sales periods, days, weeks, months, type of calendar, and the like. In an aspect, the domain editor may be configured to summarize the things such as by week, month, quarter, half, year, and the like. In an aspect, the data discovery phase may determine the vintage (such as price-sensitivity), product's conditions (such as freshness level of beer, as an example), and the like. In an aspect, the system for operating a business via guided page navigation may consider and facilitate data discovery related to First In, First Out (FIFO) sales process such as to keep things or products fresh. In an aspect, certain issues may be found during the data discovery such as the supplier may drop the customers from a master customer list if sales targets are not met. Similar issues may also be found during data discovery for salesman, product, and the like.

The data discovery tool or phase of data integration supported by the domain editor and associated functions may be configured to provide a cycle where detection that a supplier/distributor may have dropped one or more customers off the suppliers/distributors master customer list if they hadn't been sold to in a particular time (e.g. more than one year), to compare annual records of sales and services (e.g. current and prior time periods), to determine relationships among the customers, and the like.

The data discovery tool may be configured to provide the information of the products that may no longer exist in the database and salesperson information that may be no longer associated with current sales activity or a salesperson that may no longer exist in the current business entity. This may allow an industry expert operating the domain editor related tools for suppliers and/or distributors to balance with the numbers that such a customer thinks may be accurate. The data discovery tool may be configured to use Year-to-Date (YTD) sales and the historical sales (such as last year sales), go through the data and manipulate it (such as add it all up with the relationships and tools) to consider for any association or link or match. In an aspect, the customers may often have special logic in totaling reports where they may skip, substitute, or hard code items, and the like. Such customers may provide a hard copy of the report from their source system. The data domain editor module may be configured to use the data from such reports and databases to compare the data (hard copy of reports sent by the customers) against their own internal reports (collected from various sources) to allow the distributors or the suppliers to keep a balance among the products and customer requirements. In an aspect, the thoughts of the supplier and the distributor may also be compared such as to determine their needs and maintain as close as substantially 100% balance. In an aspect, the number of products and customer requirements may be balanced based on the customer thoughts (such as what the customer thinks that are accurate to the actual data they provide). These data may be compared against the distributor database data such to identify if one more match exists.

FIG. 38 depicts aspects related to a data integration module of a system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The data integration module may be configured to use the dimensions and other information determined during data discovery. The data integration module described herein may be a form of an Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) Tool. The data integration module may be configured to extract data from multiple source types, transforms with joins, lookups, filters, calculations, and the like, and loads to flat file format for builder or other uses. The data integration module may be configured to control scripts written in DI Object Language. The data integration module may be configured to include command-line execution and Visual GUI (such as Visual Data Integrator) available.

FIG. 39 depicts aspects related to a visual data integration module of a system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The visual data integration module may be configured to include a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for data integrator and application to create and manage data flow. FIG. 39 shows one embodiment of the visual data integration module during the creation of a data integration control script. Within the task flow panel 3902 the user may arrange task objects 3904, which are graphical representations of processes, inputs, and outputs, and create connections between said task objects 3904. A side panel 3908 allows the user to add new task objects 3904 to the task flow panel 3902 for inclusion in the data integration module. The attributes for the different task objects 3904 may be altered. A task object 3904 is selected and highlighted and the attribute values of the task object 3904 are displayed in the object editor 3910 shown below the task flow panel 3902. Within the object editor 3910 the values of the different attributes may be altered. The visual data integration module may further be configured to facilitate examination of data files, generate or supply script syntax to underlying control scripts, support testing and review of results, and the like.

In an example as depicted in FIG. 39, various aspects related to a builder or visual builder module of a system may facilitate data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The builder or visual builder module may be configured to summarize and preprocess the source data, transform the data into a model, and the like. The builder or visual builder module may be configured to include proprietary data structure optimized for rapid access by “Diver Solution” clients, command-line production builder available, visual builder which is a GUI tool, and the like. Further, the visual builder module may be configured to be controlled by build description files, run-time parameters, command line execution options, and the like.

FIG. 40 depicts aspects related to models of a system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The system may be configured to create industry-specific models that may have certain data summarized based on an expert review of the data conducted during data domain editor operation and use. The data may be processed through an automated structuring facility that may be guided by scripts generated by the visual domain editor. The result may be the creation of a model optimized to comply with relevant data store needs. In an example, portions of a model or a subset of a set of models may be stored on a server, on a client device such as a tablet device, and the like. The model(s) described herein may include summary tables that may render down to fact tables. The data requests may be sent to the model(s) as ad hoc or marker (saved reference) with answers being returned from the model(s). The model(s) may be stored on or be accessible in disk, cache, or other types of memory. The models(s) described herein may be memory models, multi-models, and the like. A model may consist of a column-based or row-based database or table mapped into memory for providing fast access of subsets of data and summarized data.

In an aspect, business rules may be layered onto the models or may be integrated into the models such as to facilitate access to the data in the models. This may include information about how data in the models should be used or interpreted. The business rules can set values for the variables or definitions that may be dealt with in the business. For example, “Tiers” can be defined such as to differentiate between a tier 1 versus a tier 2 customer. Similarly, “New placements” or “New products” can also be defined such as for a new product to decide if a customer purchased the product within a defined period of time or later. Business rules may also be associated with or embodied in a diveplan that may provide further guidance to access and presentation of data from the data models. A diveplan is described in further detail elsewhere herein.

Divers of a system may facilitate data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. In an aspect, a tool called the diver may be used to access the models. The diver described herein may be a fully free-form data access tool that may be aware of critical data dimensions, and the like found during data discovery. The diver may be configured to add multiple data at any location and in anytime. The diver may be configured to open up a model directly and see core dimensions. Further, the diver may be configured to enable point-and-click GUI, support viewing and analysis of model(s), displays, saves, prints data, and the like. The diver may be configured to enable various output formats such as tabular, report, graph, live data views, and the like to view the data. The diver may be configured to support unstructured diving, facilitate creating “Markers” for use in DivePort, desktop (DI-Diver), client-server (ProDiver), and the like.

Application Development

FIG. 41 depicts aspects related to an application development module of the system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The FIG. 41 depicts aspects related to an application that delivers information from data collection or a data warehouse. Delivery of data from a data collection or warehouse may be facilitated by data Integrator, Builder, Modeling (such as models, memory models, multi-models), Data access (such as Diver, DivePlans, Markers), Application-based data access (such as Diveline and Diveport), and the like, which are described herein and elsewhere.

In an example, the diveplans of the system may facilitate data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The model and data warehouse may have a direct “tunnel” connection to enable linking anything in a model to relevant source data. The dive plan described herein may be a presentation vehicle diveplan that may be similar to business rules while substantively extending them. The diveplan may be configured to present default columns that may be viewed when the customer dives. For example, the diveplan may facilitate the customer, distributor, or supplier to view the sales, cases, or gross profit of the products. The diveplan described herein may be configured to help the customer, distributor, or supplier get access to the data. The diveplans help to set up a structure (a group called “item” or “customer” so that the customer can open it up and view all of the things that may be dived on). The diveplan may allow controlling the presentation of the dynamic dimensions (have “type” show up in the customer area even though it is not a core dimension). The diveplan may pick dynamic dimensions that should be presented for each core dimension.

In an aspect, one or more things that may be tied together in a diveplan may include, for example, Florida sales, Florida (FL) annual revenue (A/R), and the like such that the customer, distributor, or supplier may dive on sales and A/R in Florida.

In an aspect, the diveplan may be configured to control how core dimensions are presented. For example, it may control dynamic dimensions for a core dimension. The diveplan may be configured to embed a tax table or rate based on a state, define definitions for the gross profit, define new placements (such as product sales time frames to define a new placement), and define discounting tiers (such as product and quantity).

To accommodate different users' needs regarding viewing sales, products, profit, and the like when a diver application is first opened by the customer, a diveplan may provide an initial view for each type of customer and/or for each unique user. Even though there may be many other dimensions or summaries, there may be an initial focal point such as initial columns to be shown. The desire of viewing the initial focus of point may be different for different functions (such as a sales representative, executive, manager, retailer, and the like may view them differently) and a diveplan may be configured for each such function.

As noted above, the wine and spirits industries have differing requirements across states. To accommodate such differing requirements, separate models may be created for different states such as one for Florida (FL) and another for California (CA). Alternatively, different models may be created for business functions such as FL sales or FL accounts receivable (A/R). A diveplan may be used to link individual models seamlessly so that they may be presented to a user as if there was a single corporate level model. In an example, the diver may be used to open a model directly to facilitate access to the core dimensions that may be related to customer or distributor or supplier. The diver technology may be used along with the business rules and diveplan(s) such as to create useful, direct links among data elements in a tablet-based user interface.

Another aspect of the invention is related to canister model of the system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. If an end result is to create some special pages instead of ad hoc diving, then the system may migrate from such as a 150 Gig model to a tablet, or the like such that the user may have a different kind of model. The different kinds of models described herein may include a “canister”, and others. The domain editor and/or integration module may be used to pre-calculate time-based columns. This is a function that may normally be left to a user using the diver function.

Viewing data in a canister model may require a user to select at least one time frame for viewing data. Essentially a canister model may define time (or time frames) as core dimension(s). While this may contribute to some constraining of navigation within the data model, it significantly increases response speed while reducing memory storage requirements, both of which are highly desirable for a tablet-based embodiment of the methods and systems described herein. In an example, the system may guide a user to pick a month (e.g. a time frame), and in response to picking a particular month, the user may be presented a matrix of a list of customers and time frames based on the selected month (e.g. Month to date dollars, YTD dollars, Quarter-to-Date (QTD) dollars, and the like) for the customer. In this aspect, the month is a dimension, customer is a dimension, but the other items are pre-determined. The canister model may be configured to combine the customer-month and hard code such as to configure the model.

In an aspect, the domain editor may be used to configure an integration module that may be used to create a canister model. The integration module may be configured to define the data to be summarized, the data to be displayed when a user selects a dimension or dimension combination, and the like. For example, the month by customer canister model may be time-based summaries of certain aspects such as Month-to-Date (MTD), YTD, QTY, Year over Year (YoY), Quarter on Quarter (QoQ), Quarter to Quarter (QtoQ), and the like. The integration module may pre-calculate the time-based data rather than allowing the diver to pre-calculate using a time core dimension. In the tablet interface, jumping from screen to screen may be limited by these time-based summaries. In order to create a canister model (before the time series software was developed), the user may had to undergo eight or nine steps along with having an extensive knowledge of data integration such as to generate the time-series summarized data.

In an example, various aspects related to technology components such as DiveLine of a system may facilitate data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The DiveLine may include server applications. The DiveLine described herein may include a service that manages connections, authenticates named users and groups, centralizes access to model data, and the like. The service described herein may be flexible and scalable to use.

In an example, various aspects related to technology components such as DivePort of the system may facilitate data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The DivePort may include JAVA server app that may reside on a Web App Server. The DivePort may be accessed via a Web browser such as to provide an information-delivery app (such as portal) based on portlet web technology. The Portal consists of pages that may contain portlet instances. The system may create and configure both the pages and their portlet instances. The presentation of data from multiple data sources may be customized. Usually, the user may use full data model when using the diver and the ProDiver. In an aspect, when a user uses DivePort, then the user may use the canister model. The DivePort may be configured to determine that a user selects a time dimension and then accesses the data based on the selection.

FIG. 41 also depicts aspects related to user access to the system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation.

FIG. 42 depicts aspects related to a configuration module of the system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation.

In an example, in conjunction with the modules of FIG. 42, a controller module of the system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may be provided. The controller module may include a DiveLine client and window-based user Interface such as to access users and model activity information and control the user access based on using a “Model”. In an aspect, the controller module may disconnect the entire user or disconnect those users who are using the model.

In an example, in conjunction with the modules of FIG. 42, a scheduler module of the system for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation may be provided. The scheduler module may include a client app such as to create and automate events related to the DI products. The scheduler module may be configured to manage jobs, events, tasks, and the like. The scheduler module may also be configured to review current status and history.

In an example, in conjunction with the modules of FIG. 42, a broadcast module of the system may be provided for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The broadcast module may be configured to include window-based user interface (UI) such as to schedule or event-driven delivery of Diver Markers via email. Further, the broadcast module may be configured to include DiveLine Admin Tool and Power user tool.

In an example, in conjunction with the modules of FIG. 42, an auditing module of the system may be provided for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The usage-auditing module may be configured to include scripts to select and manipulate DiveLine Logs and build models of the Log data. Further, the usage-auditing module may be configured to examine triggers, DivePaths, columns, user sessions, and the like.

In an example, in conjunction with the modules of FIG. 42, a DIAL module of the system may be provided for facilitating data discovery for operating a business via guided page navigation. The DIAL module described herein is a high-level programming language that may include Java-based command line program. The DIAL module may be configured to process, analyze, and distribute Model information. The DIAL module may get connected via the DiveLine. The DIAL module may be configured to find and flag exceptional data values and send results as email or saved files.

Conventional audio/video presentation systems operate on a principle that information in the presentation will be delivered linearly which necessitates that access to the information is linear. The result is that accessing information that is more than one “slide” apart requires traversing through slides to get to the desired information. The result is a visually distracting race through a sequence of slides of information that might have already been presented or has not yet been presented. Both of these scenarios may cause confusion for the audience as well as the presenter. Designers have attempted to alleviate these problems through techniques such as providing access to certain slides that might start a sequential section of slides or establishing a checkpoint in the linear sequence of slides.

The methods and systems described herein for generating and navigating through guided pages enables unparalleled flexibility for the preparation of and delivery of audio/visual presentations. These methods and systems allow a presenter (or simply a viewer) to dynamically choose a path for presenting material, even when the material is configured as individual screen-sized “slides” that may be similar in appearance to a conventional presentation slide. By enabling dynamic path selection, a presenter may be able to quickly change the presentation view to one that is pertinent to a viewer's questions and just as quickly return to the previously selected path.

Unlike linear presentations, presentations based on the methods and systems of guided page navigation described herein can also take on hierarchical characteristics. Much like navigating between guided pages uses context and relevance for determining which page to present next, hierarchical characteristics of presentations may facilitate selection of sub-presentations from higher-level groupings. In this way, any of a number of slides or groups of slides can be selected by moving up one or more levels in the presentation hierarchy. In addition, at any given level in a hierarchy, slide selection features in each of the slides may allow direct access to any of the other slides at that level. These slide selection features may be similar to points of entry on the guided pages described herein that may allow a user to access information from related dimensions directly from each guided page.

The result is a substantially different man-machine interface for delivering presentations than is available with conventional presentation systems.

Other features of the methods and systems of guided page navigation that may be beneficial for the dynamic path presentation techniques described herein may include impact of a workflow on presentation preparation. In an example, a salesperson may be planning a visit to a customer that includes delivering a presentation. A workflow for that salesperson, along with identification of the customer and customer sales history and the like, may result in relevant information being uploaded to the salesperson's computer (e.g. tablet device) and organized with guided links that facilitate dynamic presentation path selection. Further in the example, the salesperson may be presenting information about a product that competes with a product that the customer currently sells. The salesperson could switch the presentation view in response to a question by the customer regarding the sales details of the current product quickly because the guided page navigation methods and systems would have configured the salesperson's computer (e.g. tablet) with a set of presentation slides that have guided navigation links to the information that is relevant to the salesperson's workflow (selling) and customer (sales history by product). However, rather than simply providing all of the relevant information and documents to the salesperson, each document and data element would be coherently linked using the techniques described herein for generating guided pages from data models based on core dimensions and the like.

The guided page type, dynamic path selection presentation capabilities described herein may also be leveraged for specific users, departments, and the like. Corporations often generate information, news, press releases, and the like. In addition, corporations often require disseminating information to select users while broadcasting other information to a wider audience. The guided page navigation methods and systems described herein that incorporate user roles, workflow, hierarchy, and the like can be leveraged by the presentation methods and systems herein to facilitate delivery and broadcasting of news and the like. In an example of a marketing manager desiring to present news to the marketing staff and present only a portion of that news to the entire company. A “news” module of the guided page systems described herein may access the marketing news and provide links among the news items that are determined based on the user viewing this news so that marketing staff can link to information that others in the company cannot.

Similarly, presentation information can be associated with core dimensions as described herein in such a way as to allow access based on connections among dimensions. Presentations may therefore be dynamically adjusted based on a dimension such as customer. While a general sales presentation may be generated, by a user selecting an entry in a dimension (e.g. a specific customer in a “customer core dimension”) the presentation may dynamically adjust to only include slides that are associated with the selected dimension and specific entry.

In another example, a sales team may want to generate news for internal use at a company about a recent big sale to a particular customer. A presentation about news in the company may show this news item. Upon selection of this news item, context may be directed to the customer dimension and more specifically to the customer in the news item. The user could then view guided pages of the customer's sales, shipments, returns, and any other data by region, quarter, location, and the like because the guide pages containing this information could be accessed directly from the presentation of the news item because the news item identified the specific customer dimension value (e.g. customer name). Within the guided pages of the customer specific information, one such guided page may include entries related to customer specific news over time (e.g. counts of news stories per quarter). Selection of one of these entries may bring up a selection of news items that maybe viewed in presentation mode.

The synergistic application of the methods and systems of dynamic presentation path selection with the methods and systems of guide page navigation each of which is described herein is envisioned as resulting in an integration of business needs including: documents, data inputs, messages, workflows, projects, numbers, and the like with technology requirements including: numbers, text, video, pictures, and the like in an interface that results in flexible ways of accessing information for operating a business around core dimensions of data that is pertinent to the business operation. The result is envisioned as an interface that seamless facilitates access to all types of information for operating the business.

At least through the application of the methods and systems for generating guided pages from disparate source data, which may include processing of the source data by a central server, corporate presentations may be coordinated so as to ensure that different presenters reference corporate information that is consistent across all presentations. Therefore, the methods and systems described herein may provide the significant benefit of ensuring that presentations (or at least portions, such as specific pages, data, and the like) are synchronized against data models and centralized data and content sources. This benefit extends to enabling management to centrally manage key presentation materials and resources so as to help presenters avoid inconsistency of message. However, by the dynamic path selection capabilities, each presenter may be enabled to tailor the flow of his/her presentation for the audience at hand.

In addition, each presentation, or more particularly, each section of a presentation (which may include a collection of closely related pages, and the like) may be linked through the guided page techniques that relate back to core dimensions through the data models, business rules and other techniques described herein. In this way, presentations may link to each other to organize the presentations themselves. Such linkages may become a meta-presentation that enables each presentation to work along side each other, as opposed to conventional linear presentations that can be individually modified without consideration for impact to others. In an example of inter-presentation linkages, a set of presentations for a user group meeting may result in creating a type of “glue” between individual presentations that results in a company-wide resource of material that can be used to educate customers.

Referring to FIG. 43, various presentation slides that facilitate dynamic path selection are depicted. In particular, slide 48 shows some of the features described herein. A left arrow allows for directly linking to the previously presented slide even if the previously presented slide is not linearly the previous slide. The previous slide might have been a slide about technology generally or the like. Other selectable elements along the bottom of the figure implement the dynamic path selection described herein. Each of “opportunity” “di mobile”, “knowledge”, and “workflow” may link to a slide somewhere else in the presentation. In this example “opportunity” links to slide 49, “di mobile” links to slide 48, “knowledge” links to slide 51 and “workflow” links to slide 52. In this way, a presenter can select any of these topics to discuss with the audience from the single technology slide 50.

FIG. 50 may also depict how core technologies grouped as “The Diver Solution 6.4” that harvest data from data sources can interact with “IPAD Design” technologies that interact with “IPAD Process” and “Document Management” to deliver updated guided pages on a regular basis.

FIG. 43 depicts an exemplary top level showing a selection of dynamic paths to follow.

FIG. 44 depicts an exemplary guided page view of distributors that may be suitable for use in a presentation that may be presented when the “Distributors” tab is selected in FIG. 43.

FIG. 45 depicts an exemplary slide of product logos that may be presented when a “Product” tab is selected in FIG. 43.

FIG. 47 depicts an exemplary slide of Web PDF data that contains links to other non-linearly presented data.

FIG. 48 depicts an exemplary presentation menu slide that may be presented by selecting the “presentation” tab in FIG. 43.

Methods and systems described herein may include dynamically navigating a presentation that comprises a set of guided pages of content wherein groups of presentation pages are linked to other groups of presentation pages through association with a set of core dimensions that are determined during a data discovery process and that are common to the presentation pages. The presentation may include content pages, data pages, and hybrid pages wherein actionable elements in the presentation pages link to other presentation pages based on the core dimensions.

Methods and systems described herein may include automatically linking a plurality of presentations that are organized around a set of common core data dimensions that are extracted from disparate source data related to operation of a business.

Information Leaping

The methods, systems, technology, and techniques of guided page navigation described herein may be applied to presentation type page navigation to facilitate information leaping. Information leaping may generally be characterized as quickly moving from one information domain to another information domain. In the context of page type navigation, information leaping may be characterized as rapidly moving from a first spot in a presentation of information to another related spot that may not be physically close to the first spot (e.g. may not be the previous or next slide in a presentation). The guided page navigation disclosure herein may facilitate such information leaping in business intelligence-related presentations through various techniques related to determining a set of possible destinations associated with information on a given presentation slide, selecting a subset of the possible destinations, and enabling links to the selected subset of possible destination (e.g. tabs, selectable content, and the like) on the given presentation slide that rapidly shift the information focus (e.g. by presenting related information) when selected. In essence, information leaping may require techniques that facilitate determining in advance where each link of active content and menu item (e.g. tab) will leap to so as to arrive at a right place.

Unlike a conventional presentation format that enables linear forward/back information viewing with limited direct access (e.g. based on a table of contents), a presentation environment configured with information leaping facilitates accessing any content within a presentation in as little as 2 to 3 taps/clicks. Two navigation related aspects of the present embodiments of information leaping that facilitates this great accessibility to information, are the use of active content within a presentation format, and the use of preconfigured tabs that facilitate rapidly changing a view of information presented in a given presentation slide. Another aspect includes specific presentation page types, such as access, central, and list page types. A third aspect includes cross technology conversion that facilitates converting a conventional linear progressing slide presentation (e.g. .PPT format) into a bookmarked presentation environment that is further adapted for viewing on an electronic display device, such as a tablet or smartphone.

Information leaping may facilitate success in a situation in which a presenter is posed a question and within a few clicks (e.g. two or three) leap from a current presentation slide or information view to another information view that is directly related to the posed question. Because the presenter quickly navigates to a desired information area based on a posed question, the viewer may recognize or conclude that the movement to the new information is not purely through a canned process that shows generic information.

Like conventional linear progression slide presentation, information leaping capable presentations that may be enabled by the guided page navigation methods and systems described herein may facilitate rapid access to various other types of media (e.g. images, video, live streaming, documents, and the like) as embedded items, or as externally accessible items that may employ media-specific viewers, and the like. Information leaping to/from various media types may be accomplished through accessing active data items, menu items, and the like.

Generating a Presentation that Facilitates Information Leaping

Generating a presentation that supports information leaping may include various process steps, such as data gathering, organization, and the like. A portion of the steps that may be included relate to cross technology conversion of presentation information. In an example of generating an information leaping capable presentation, process steps may include creating a conventional set of presentation slides (e.g. using Microsoft Powerpoint™), saving the slides to a portable document format (e.g. .PDF) document, applying guided page navigation techniques to convert/generate bookmarks (e.g. Acrobat compatible bookmarks), generating a tab for each bookmark and inserting an information relevant subset of tabs to be presented with (e.g. at the bottom of) each presentation page, and providing access to the finalized presentation. Access may be by downloading the presentation to a device, accessing the presentation from the cloud with a device, and forwarding the presentation via email attachment. The step of generating tabs from bookmarks may include using a software program that is adapted to extract bookmark metadata from a .PDF automatically generated table of contents. A user of such a software program may manually organize the tabs and associate the tabs with content on each presentation page.

Indicators

A cell may contain an alphanumeric item and/or an indicator. Indicators may take on a range of colors, patterns, shapes, logos, icons, labels, characteristics, and the like. Examples of indicators are depicted in FIGS. 53 through 61 and are described here. An indicator may be a graphical element that is used to represent an alphanumeric value, a numeric value or range graphically. An indicator may also consist of a differentiator for a cell entry, such as a particular color or the like. FIG. 53 depicts using color as indicator that is based on a comparison of a cell content to a reference, such as whether the value is above the reference. Color indicators in a first cell may be determined by cell content in a related cell. An indicator may consist of an alert, which may be a colored icon where the color is based on a set of thresholds on a numeric value as shown in FIG. 54. An indicator may consist of a bullet graph as depicted in FIG. 55, where numeric values are used to define the bullet length, a threshold displayed as a line, and a threshold displayed as a bounding box. An indicator may consist of an image or set of images that is present or chosen based on a numeric value as depicted in FIG. 56. An indicator may consist of a slider, which is a graph (typically aligned on a line) with an alphanumerica numeric value displayed as text and positioned within a range (represented by the ends of the line) based on its value relative to the range as depicted in FIG. 57. An indicator may consist of a plus-minus graph, where a positive or negative value is displayed as a graph and colored based on whether it is positive or negative as shown in FIG. 58. An indicator may consist of a racetrack, where a set of stop/go “lights” or colored icons is chosen based on the value in the cell as depicted in FIG. 59. An indicator may consist of a rectangle, where a rectangle is displayed with colors based on a set of thresholds for the numeric value as shown in FIG. 60. An indicator may consist of an arrow whose color and direction is set as a function of the value of a cell as shown in FIG. 61. Other colors, shapes, and meanings of indicators are contemplated and included herein.

Column Expansion

An embodiment may include an interface for displaying additional columns or rows using an expand capability. These additional columns or rows may relate to the expanded column or row, allowing deeper analysis by providing context to the numbers in that column to improve understanding.

FIG. 62 displays a tablet matrix of cells, including columns with attribute data and expandable columns whose header includes a chevron icon (>>) indicating that the representation of the data in the column may be expanded or altered in some way. Tapping on an expandable column header brings up a menu (FIG. 63) comprising various options including “Sort Up”, “Sort Down”, “Graph Column” and “Expand.”

Selecting “Expand” from the menu (FIG. 63) results in an additional set of columns being displayed (FIG. 64) which provide additional data related to the selected column. The example (FIGS. 62-64) shows a column labeled “Populations in Millions” being selected and expanded. The resultant display (FIG. 64) in the example includes additional columns of statistics such as “Median Income”, “Health Spending Per Capita”, “% in Poverty”, and “% on Food Stamps” and “Unemployment Rate.” The additional columns provide extra information that does not need to be present in the initial display.

The last of the expanded columns, “Unemployment Rate” in the example (FIG. 64), includes a reverse chevron icon (<<) indicating that the representation of data in the column may be shrunk or altered in some way. Selecting the header with the reverse chevron brings up a menu (FIG. 65) comprising various options including “Sort Up”, “Sort Down”, “Graph Column” and “Shrink.” Selecting “Shrink” from the menu (FIG. 65) results in the additional columns disappearing, reverting back to the original display (FIG. 62).

Selecting “Graph Column” from the menu (FIG. 66) results in the appearance of an additional column next to the selected numeric column. In the additional column a graphical representation of value appears (FIG. 67) providing a visual representation of the numeric data. This option can be enabled by default for any numeric column. This allows a graphical representation to be available for numeric columns in the interface without additional setup.

In another embodiment, tapping on an expandable numeric column header brings up a menu showing additional options including “Rank Column” and “Percent Column.” Similar to “Graph Column,” these selections result in the introduction of additional columns providing another way of looking at the same numeric data (FIG. 68). “Rank Column” results in the addition of a column showing the numerical rank of the row's value relative to the other values in the column. “Percent Column” results in the addition of a column showing the % of the total column value contributed by that row's value.

Numeric expandable columns may be expanded along a variety of dimensions such as time as in “Expand Prior Year” and related numeric metrics resulting in the display of additional, rather than just transformed, related numeric data. In the example (FIG. 69) “Net Sales YTD” may be expanded to show a variety of selectable related numeric metrics such as “Expand Cost”, “Expand Depletion Allowance”, “Expand Gross Profit” and “Expand Discount.” Selection of “Expand Gross Profit” results in the display of new columns (FIG. 70) including “Gross Profit YTD”, “Gross Profit LYTD”, and the year on year changes such as “Gross Profit YTD Diff” and “Gross Profit YTD % Diff.”

Expansion of numeric columns in the time dimension may include showing the same data over different time spans or different time intervals. In one example, a column of sales for a year can be expanded into multiple columns of sales, one for each month of the year. Alternately, a column such as “Net Sales YTD” may have an option to “Expand Prior Year” (FIG. 69) whose selection would result in the addition of a column of prior year YTD sales at the same point in the earlier years.

The interface may also be enhanced so that columns that have been added through expansion can be expanded themselves into additional columns. This forms a tree of expanded columns based on the original column, with each expandable column forming a node of this tree. This allows the user to navigation through data columns through column expansion.

The schema by which numeric columns may be expanded to show additional columns of information is straightforward. In one embodiment (FIG. 71) the title of the initial expandable column is followed by a plurality of multiple row groups. Each group of rows comprises a menu title such as “Expand Prior Year” and the columns of data to be displayed upon selection.

Photograph Entry and Use

An embodiment may include the ability to take, upload photos and associate them with data being displayed. For example, when displaying a list of products, there may be the ability to display photographs of these products, their location in a store, and any advertising displays related to them. The mobile device may allow the end-user to take these photographs, and upload them the next time the device is connected to the back-end server.

FIGS. 72 through 77 demonstrate the use of an interface for taking and uploading photographs. FIG. 72 displays a tablet matrix of cells, with elements being able to respond to a photo request as click-actions. In this embodiment, icons with a picture of a camera can be tapped to bring up a standard photo taking display as depicted in FIG. 73. The system may be configured to have other display elements, such as a missing image, capable of being tapped to take a photo. After the user takes a photo, the photo is stored locally so that it is ready for upload to a back-end server at a later time. By storing the photo locally, many photos can be taken in rapid succession, such as for different products, without having to wait for individual uploads to complete in between photo shots.

After the user has taken a number of photographs, they can switch to the Review Pending Uploads screen by selecting the menu item depicted in FIG. 74 to view and edit photographs, which are pending. Upon selection of the Review Pending Uploads menu items depicted in FIG. 74, a screen listing photographs that are waiting to be uploaded may be displayed as is depicted in FIG. 75. By clicking on individual photo list entries the user can access an Edit Pending Upload Settings interface as depicted in FIG. 76 to change photograph parameters, such as the file name, edit meta data that may be displayed in the listing of photographs, and the like. The Edit screen may also include save options, such as to allow overwriting an existing file.

Once the user has editing any pending uploads, the user can tap the sync button and upload the pending photos to the server, where the photographs can be attached to data, for display in a tablet matrix, such as that depicted in FIG. 75.

The photographs that are taken may be tagged with metadata identifying the original data element touched to take the picture, so that the server will be able to associate the photograph with that data element. This metadata may be displayed in the photograph list and pending upload displays.

Photographs, while in some ways may simply be another form of content, may provide context and scope (e.g. depth) of information that may augment alphanumerical data. Photographs are useful for collecting details that exist at a point in time during a transient process, such as production, retail sales, service delivery, and the like. For these and many other reasons they may be beneficial to operation of a business. However, without proper linkage and ways of associating photographs to each other and to the important business data that facilitates operating a business, their benefit can be missed. Therefore, by using the methods and systems described herein for linking data and other content items (e.g. photographs, video, publications, reports, and the like) to develop guided navigation pages for operating a business, value and benefits of photographs to a business operation may be substantively increased.

Exemplary scenarios in which photographs may be beneficial, when properly combined with operational business data, may include retail store fronts, shelf allocation, product placement, insurance claim handling, quality control and improvement, equipment maintenance, production line disturbance analysis, returned/damaged materials assessment, injuries, and many others. By taking a photograph and linking it with a range of data dimensions, including central dimensions as described herein, the methods and systems for operating a business based on guided navigation among information screens, deeper understanding of transient events may benefit. Photographs may also provide evidence of service delivery (e.g. signage installation), performance over time (periodic photographs of returned materials), and the like.

By combining photographs with linkable elements, such as central dimensions and various data domains, photographs that are collected and tagged as linkable content items may address handling of exceptions, such as during production. In an example, photographs of a break down of a production machine on a factor floor may be linked to a machine dimension, a product dimension, a customer order dimension, a preventive maintenance dimension, a service claims dimension, an enterprise resource planning dimension (e.g. production planning), and the like. Therefore when an equipment service provider is using the linked guided page methods and systems described herein he may select data items related to a customer's service requirements (e.g. factor visits to repair equipment) and gain access to the photographs associated with a customer, a machine, a service contract, production cycle data, an in-service date, a production machine lot code, and the like. In this way, if the same equipment is serviced at several different customers sites, commonalities among the customers (e.g. machine type, time in-service, etc.) may be leveraged to determine equipment failures through the use of photographs taken when an equipment failure occurs.

Another exemplary use environment for photographs may include product returns. A photograph of a returned product may be linked to a wide range of business operation items, such as a product part number dimension that can tie into a company's ERP system, a production lot code dimension, a production line/machine dimension, a production batch dimension, a raw material dimension, a customer and/or type of customer dimension, and the like. In addition a library of photographs may be collected and analyzed through association with various dimensions that may be linked to the photographs in the library. When analysis of a return is performed, photographs from the analysis may be added to the library and linked to these and other central dimensions.

While photographs may not have any inherently linkable information, merely linking a photograph to a data dimension (e.g. production lot) may, through the existence of associations between a production lot dimension and many other dimension and domains, many of which are described herein above, a photograph may take on a large number of valuable attributes and may be accessible from a large number of dimensions. As noted above a returned item serial number associated with a photograph, may facilitate linking the photograph to a batch of raw materials received from a supplier, thereby potentially increasing effectiveness of communications with the material supplier.

Other use environments for the methods and systems related to photograph use described herein may include inventory management, product placement, OSHA related compliance and reporting, human resource compliance data for accidents, existence or maintenance records of safety signage, any kind of service claim, and the like. A time series of photographs may be quite useful in substantiating sales revenue numbers, and the like.

Machine Embodiments

The methods and systems described herein may be deployed in part or in whole through a machine that executes computer software, program codes, and/or instructions on a processor. The processor may be part of a server, client, network infrastructure, mobile computing platform, stationary computing platform, or other computing platform. A processor may be any kind of computational or processing device capable of executing program instructions, codes, binary instructions and the like. The processor may be or include a signal processor, digital processor, embedded processor, microprocessor or any variant such as a co-processor (math co-processor, graphic co-processor, communication co-processor and the like) and the like that may directly or indirectly facilitate execution of program code or program instructions stored thereon. In addition, the processor may enable execution of multiple programs, threads, and codes. The threads may be executed simultaneously to enhance the performance of the processor and to facilitate simultaneous operations of the application. By way of implementation, methods, program codes, program instructions and the like described herein may be implemented in one or more thread. The thread may spawn other threads that may have assigned priorities associated with them; the processor may execute these threads based on priority or any other order based on instructions provided in the program code. The processor may include memory that stores methods, codes, instructions and programs as described herein and elsewhere. The processor may access a storage medium through an interface that may store methods, codes, and instructions as described herein and elsewhere. The storage medium associated with the processor for storing methods, programs, codes, program instructions or other type of instructions capable of being executed by the computing or processing device may include but may not be limited to one or more of a CD-ROM, DVD, memory, hard disk, flash drive, RAM, ROM, cache and the like.

A processor may include one or more cores that may enhance speed and performance of a multiprocessor. In embodiments, the process may be a dual core processor, quad core processors, other chip-level multiprocessor and the like that combine two or more independent cores (called a die).

The methods and systems described herein may be deployed in part or in whole through a machine that executes computer software on a server, client, firewall, gateway, hub, router, or other such computer and/or networking hardware. The software program may be associated with a server that may include a file server, print server, domain server, internet server, intranet server and other variants such as secondary server, host server, distributed server and the like. The server may include one or more of memories, processors, computer readable media, storage media, ports (physical and virtual), communication devices, and interfaces capable of accessing other servers, clients, machines, and devices through a wired or a wireless medium, and the like. The methods, programs or codes as described herein and elsewhere may be executed by the server. In addition, other devices required for execution of methods as described in this application may be considered as a part of the infrastructure associated with the server.

The server may provide an interface to other devices including, without limitation, clients, other servers, printers, database servers, print servers, file servers, communication servers, distributed servers and the like. Additionally, this coupling and/or connection may facilitate remote execution of program across the network. The networking of some or all of these devices may facilitate parallel processing of a program or method at one or more location without deviating from the scope of the invention. In addition, all the devices attached to the server through an interface may include at least one storage medium capable of storing methods, programs, code and/or instructions. A central repository may provide program instructions to be executed on different devices. In this implementation, the remote repository may act as a storage medium for program code, instructions, and programs.

The software program may be associated with a client that may include a file client, print client, domain client, internet client, intranet client and other variants such as secondary client, host client, distributed client and the like. The client may include one or more of memories, processors, computer readable media, storage media, ports (physical and virtual), communication devices, and interfaces capable of accessing other clients, servers, machines, and devices through a wired or a wireless medium, and the like. The methods, programs or codes as described herein and elsewhere may be executed by the client. In addition, other devices required for execution of methods as described in this application may be considered as a part of the infrastructure associated with the client.

The client may provide an interface to other devices including, without limitation, servers, other clients, printers, database servers, print servers, file servers, communication servers, distributed servers and the like. Additionally, this coupling and/or connection may facilitate remote execution of program across the network. The networking of some or all of these devices may facilitate parallel processing of a program or method at one or more location without deviating from the scope of the invention. In addition, all the devices attached to the client through an interface may include at least one storage medium capable of storing methods, programs, applications, code and/or instructions. A central repository may provide program instructions to be executed on different devices. In this implementation, the remote repository may act as a storage medium for program code, instructions, and programs.

The methods and systems described herein may be deployed in part or in whole through network infrastructures. The network infrastructure may include elements such as computing devices, servers, routers, hubs, firewalls, clients, personal computers, communication devices, routing devices and other active and passive devices, modules and/or components as known in the art. The computing and/or non-computing device(s) associated with the network infrastructure may include, apart from other components, a storage medium such as flash memory, buffer, stack, RAM, ROM and the like. The processes, methods, program codes, instructions described herein and elsewhere may be executed by one or more of the network infrastructural elements.

The methods, program codes, and instructions described herein and elsewhere may be implemented on a cellular network having multiple cells. The cellular network may either be frequency division multiple access (FDMA) network or code division multiple access (CDMA) network. The cellular network may include mobile devices, cell sites, base stations, repeaters, antennas, towers, and the like.

The methods, programs codes, and instructions described herein and elsewhere may be implemented on or through mobile devices. The mobile devices may include navigation devices, cell phones, mobile phones, mobile personal digital assistants, laptops, palmtops, netbooks, pagers, electronic books readers, music players and the like. These devices may include, apart from other components, a storage medium such as a flash memory, buffer, RAM, ROM and one or more computing devices. The computing devices associated with mobile devices may be enabled to execute program codes, methods, and instructions stored thereon. Alternatively, the mobile devices may be configured to execute instructions in collaboration with other devices. The mobile devices may communicate with base stations interfaced with servers and configured to execute program codes. The mobile devices may communicate on a peer to peer network, mesh network, or other communications network. The program code may be stored on the storage medium associated with the server and executed by a computing device embedded within the server. The base station may include a computing device and a storage medium. The storage device may store program codes and instructions executed by the computing devices associated with the base station.

The computer software, program codes, and/or instructions may be stored and/or accessed on machine readable media that may include: computer components, devices, and recording media that retain digital data used for computing for some interval of time; semiconductor storage known as random access memory (RAM); mass storage typically for more permanent storage, such as optical discs, forms of magnetic storage like hard disks, tapes, drums, cards and other types; processor registers, cache memory, volatile memory, non-volatile memory; optical storage such as CD, DVD; removable media such as flash memory (e.g. USB sticks or keys), floppy disks, magnetic tape, paper tape, punch cards, standalone RAM disks, Zip drives, removable mass storage, off-line, and the like; other computer memory such as dynamic memory, static memory, read/write storage, mutable storage, read only, random access, sequential access, location addressable, file addressable, content addressable, network attached storage, storage area network, bar codes, magnetic ink, and the like.

The methods and systems described herein may transform physical and/or or intangible items from one state to another. The methods and systems described herein may also transform data representing physical and/or intangible items from one state to another.

The elements described and depicted herein, including in flow charts and block diagrams throughout the figures, imply logical boundaries between the elements. However, according to software or hardware engineering practices, the depicted elements and the functions thereof may be implemented on machines through computer executable media having a processor capable of executing program instructions stored thereon as a monolithic software structure, as standalone software modules, or as modules that employ external routines, code, services, and so forth, or any combination of these, and all such implementations may be within the scope of the present disclosure. Examples of such machines may include, but may not be limited to, personal digital assistants, laptops, personal computers, mobile phones, other handheld computing devices, medical equipment, wired or wireless communication devices, transducers, chips, calculators, satellites, tablet PCs, electronic books, gadgets, electronic devices, devices having artificial intelligence, computing devices, networking equipments, servers, routers and the like. Furthermore, the elements depicted in the flow chart and block diagrams or any other logical component may be implemented on a machine capable of executing program instructions. Thus, while the foregoing drawings and descriptions set forth functional aspects of the disclosed systems, no particular arrangement of software for implementing these functional aspects should be inferred from these descriptions unless explicitly stated or otherwise clear from the context. Similarly, it will be appreciated that the various steps identified and described above may be varied, and that the order of steps may be adapted to particular applications of the techniques disclosed herein. All such variations and modifications are intended to fall within the scope of this disclosure. As such, the depiction and/or description of an order for various steps should not be understood to require a particular order of execution for those steps, unless required by a particular application, or explicitly stated or otherwise clear from the context.

The methods and/or processes described above, and steps thereof, may be realized in hardware, software or any combination of hardware and software suitable for a particular application. The hardware may include a general purpose computer and/or dedicated computing device or specific computing device or particular aspect or component of a specific computing device. The processes may be realized in one or more microprocessors, microcontrollers, embedded microcontrollers, programmable digital signal processors or other programmable device, along with internal and/or external memory. The processes may also, or instead, be embodied in an application specific integrated circuit, a programmable gate array, programmable array logic, or any other device or combination of devices that may be configured to process electronic signals. It will further be appreciated that one or more of the processes may be realized as a computer executable code capable of being executed on a machine readable medium.

The computer executable code may be created using a structured programming language such as C, an object oriented programming language such as C++, or any other high-level or low-level programming language (including assembly languages, hardware description languages, and database programming languages and technologies) that may be stored, compiled or interpreted to run on one of the above devices, as well as heterogeneous combinations of processors, processor architectures, or combinations of different hardware and software, or any other machine capable of executing program instructions.

Thus, in one aspect, each method described above and combinations thereof may be embodied in computer executable code that, when executing on one or more computing devices, performs the steps thereof. In another aspect, the methods may be embodied in systems that perform the steps thereof, and may be distributed across devices in a number of ways, or all of the functionality may be integrated into a dedicated, standalone device or other hardware. In another aspect, the means for performing the steps associated with the processes described above may include any of the hardware and/or software described above. All such permutations and combinations are intended to fall within the scope of the present disclosure.

While the invention has been disclosed in connection with the preferred embodiments shown and described in detail, various modifications and improvements thereon will become readily apparent to those skilled in the art. Accordingly, the spirit and scope of the present invention is not to be limited by the foregoing examples, but is to be understood in the broadest sense allowable by law.

All documents referenced herein are hereby incorporated in their entirety by reference. 

We claim:
 1. A system comprising: an interactive electronic display; a tangible, non-transitory, computer-readable media comprising a data set and a plurality of guided pages; the data set including data from a plurality of distinct data domains, each of the plurality of distinct data domains derived from a plurality of disparate data sources that are used in a workflow for a particular business activity, the plurality of disparate data sources consisting of internal data sources associated with operating the particular business activity and external data sources, the data set having a plurality of core dimensions, at least one of the plurality of core dimensions identifying a data type within the plurality of distinct data domains for continuing the workflow for the particular business activity, and having at least one time-based summary of data associated with at least one of a plurality of core dimensions, wherein at least one of the plurality of core dimensions is a common core dimension to at least two of the plurality of distinct data domains for the workflow for the particular business activity; a first guided page representing a first distinct data domain of the plurality of distinct data domains comprising data from the at least one time-based summary presented in the first guided page as an actionable element that when selected results in direct navigation to a second guided page, wherein the direct navigation causes the second guided page comprising data from a second distinct data domain of the plurality of distinct data domains to replace the first guided page; and wherein the second guided page comprises data of the second distinct data domain that is associated with a core dimension of the plurality of core dimensions that is common to both the first distinct data domain and the second distinct data domain for the workflow for the particular business activity.
 2. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein user interaction via the interactive electronic display with the actionable element further results in presenting at least one of: a third guided page of the first distinct data domain; and a fourth guided page of the second distinct data domain that is associated with the at least one time-based summary of data associated with a core dimension of the plurality that is common to the first distinct data domain and the second distinct data domain for the workflow for the particular business activity.
 3. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the external data sources comprise at least two sources selected from third party feeds, market data, end-user data, state data, county data, regional data, demo data, legacy systems, ERP systems, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, suppliers, distributors, government entities, product information, state laws and regulations, federal laws and regulations, local laws and regulations, customer information, purchase history, news, and industry guidelines.
 4. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the internal data sources comprise at least two sources selected from a list consisting of flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, non-standard formatted data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.
 5. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the at least one time-based summary of data associated with the core dimension is industry-specific.
 6. The system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a plurality of distinct model-based data repositories within which a plurality of time-based summary of data associated with the core dimension are organized.
 7. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the at least one time-based summary of data is pre calculated via a time core dimension.
 8. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the at least one time-based summary of data increases response speed while reducing memory storage requirements to facilitate use in a tablet-based interactive electronic display.
 9. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein each of the plurality of distinct data domains is derived from a distinct data model, each distinct data model adapted to generate a single distinct data domain.
 10. The system of claim 1, wherein the external data sources comprise at least two sources selected from third party feeds, market data, end-user data, state data, county data, regional data, demo data, legacy systems, ERP systems, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, suppliers, distributors, government entities, product information, state laws and regulations, federal laws and regulations, local laws and regulations, customer information, purchase history, news, and industry guidelines; and wherein the internal data sources comprise at least two sources selected from a list consisting of flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, non-standard formatted data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.
 11. A tangible, non-transient, computer-readable media having instructions thereupon which when implemented by a processor cause the processor to perform a method comprising: accessing data from a plurality of disparate data sources that are used in a workflow for a particular business activity, the plurality of disparate data sources consisting of internal data sources associated with operating a business, and external data sources, the accessed data comprising a plurality of distinct data domains; determining a plurality of core dimensions of the accessed data, at least one of the plurality of core dimension identifying a data type within the plurality of distinct data domains for continuing the workflow for the particular business activity; calculating one or more time-based summaries of data associated with at least one of the plurality of core dimensions, wherein at least one of the plurality of core dimensions is a common core dimension to at least two of the plurality of distinct data domains for the workflow for the particular business activity; and presenting in a guided page user interface on an interactive electronic display, a first guided page representing a first distinct data domain of the plurality of distinct data domains comprising data from the one or more time-based summaries presented in the first guided page as an actionable element that when selected results in direct navigation to a second guided page, wherein the direct navigation causes the second guided page comprising data from a second distinct data domain of the plurality of distinct data domains to replace the first guided page, wherein the second guided page comprises data of the second distinct data domain that is associated with a core dimension of the plurality of core dimensions that is common to both the first distinct data domain and the second distinct data domain for the workflow for the particular business activity.
 12. The method as recited in claim 11, wherein the internal data sources comprise at least two sources selected from a list consisting of flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, non-standard formatted data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.
 13. The method as recited in claim 11, wherein the external data sources comprise at least two sources selected from third party feeds, market data, end-user data, state data, county data, regional data, demo data, legacy systems, ERP systems, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, suppliers, distributors, government entities, product information, state laws and regulations, federal laws and regulations, local laws and regulations, customer information, purchase history, news, and industry guidelines.
 14. The method of claim 11, wherein at least one of the first and the second guided pages represents a plurality of related views of a portion of the accessed data.
 15. The method of claim 11, wherein a portion of at least one of the first and the second guided pages comprises a plurality of tables that comprise dimensions that are present in the accessed data and values that correspond to dimensions that are common across a plurality of guided pages.
 16. The method of claim 11, further comprising: facilitating the direct navigation from the first guided page to the second guided page based on guided page storage that includes directory structure and data directory information accessible by the processor.
 17. The method of claim 11, further comprising: configuring information derived from the data in a data set in the interactive electronic display based on guided page data structure information that is accessible by the processor.
 18. A tangible, non-transient, computer-readable media having instructions thereupon which when implemented by a processor with an interactive electronic display and cause the processor to perform a method comprising: accessing data from a plurality of disparate data sources that are used in a workflow for a particular business activity, the accessed data comprising a plurality of distinct data domains, the plurality of disparate data sources consisting of internal data sources associated with operating the particular business activity and external data sources, wherein the internal data sources comprise at least two sources selected from a list consisting of flat files, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, non-standard formatted data, legacy systems, transactional systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and the external data sources comprise at least two sources selected from third party feeds, market data, end-user data, state data, county data, regional data, demo data, legacy systems, ERP systems, spreadsheets, data warehouses, SQL databases, suppliers, distributors, government entities, product information, state laws and regulations, federal laws and regulations, local laws and regulations, customer information, purchase history, news, and industry guidelines; assigning a plurality of core dimensions for identifying data types within the plurality of distinct data domains for continuing the workflow for the particular business activity, at least one of the plurality of core dimensions being common to at least two of the plurality of distinct data domains; calculating at least one time-based summary of data associated with at least one of the plurality of core dimensions, wherein at least one of the plurality of core dimensions is a common core dimension to at least two of the plurality of distinct data domains for the workflow for the particular business activity; facilitating direct navigation among a plurality of guided pages via one or more actionable elements each presented in a corresponding guided page of the plurality, wherein: direct navigation from a first guided page of the plurality to a second guided page of the plurality causes the second guided page to replace the first guided page, the first guided page comprises data of a first distinct data domain of the plurality of distinct data domains and the second guided page comprises data of a second distinct data domain of the plurality of distinct data domains, and the data of the first guided page and the data of the second guided page are associated with the common core dimension.
 19. The method of claim 18, wherein a portion of the plurality of guided pages comprises a plurality of tables that comprise dimensions that are present in a data set and values that correspond to dimensions that are common across the plurality of guided pages. 